Today I got to cut the grass!!!  I was so excited!  Y’all know how much I love to cut the grass (absolutely NO sarcasm.  I really do like it!).  I got my morning housework done.  We ate an early lunch and I headed on out the door.

I was surprised at all the autumn leaves in the yard!  I guess I shouldn’t have been, it is half way through October after all.

Once I noticed all the leaves, I began to inspect the yard as I mowed.  I was looking for signs of dormancy.  How much longer would this years mowing season last?

The yard is showing absolutely NO signs of being dormant.  I will be mowing at least until the end of November.  This makes me happy.   🙂

The other thing that surprised me was the number of fire ant hills!  Usually around this time of year you don’t see many of them.

When we were in Chicago last weekend, our area received over 2″ of rain.  This must’ve brought out the fire ants.  There were quite a few substantial hills.

As I approached the hills, I thought of my MFP pal Gigi.  She likes to remind me of how industrious ants are.  I kept that in mind as I mowed them down.  I felt just a tiny bit guilty.  Not guilty enough to stop~and I thoroughly enjoy watching those nasty ants run around absolutely furious with me due to the fact that I had leveled their home.

This was the first time I had mowed since the chickens had moved to their new home.  They lived on the East side of the property.  It was quiet over there.  No hens clucking trying to catch the bugs I had chased into their enclosure with the mower.  No Peter announcing to the neighborhood that I was out mowing.  That was sad.

It is the time of year for spiders!

This time of year, the humongo spiders come out and build these big webs under branches, between bushes…they are opportunists.  I keep my eyes open for them.

We have some overhanging wires on our property and as I got close to go under those wires, I was inspecting them pretty doggone close.  I did not encounter any spider there.

HOWEVER…

I forgot about the spiders as I was mowing around the Crepe Myrtles.

I was zipping round those trees/bushes on the West side of the property when, Ewwww!!!!!  Right through a big, nasty, awful spider web!

I was flailing my arms and kicking up a fuss and there was nobody there to check to see if I had a spider on me!  It was awful!  What to do?

Well, I drove back to where the spider web was and looked.  Whew!  The spider was still there~and he was mad!  That thing was huge, too!  I truly am not exaggerating when I say it was well over the size of a quarter.  It was brown and it was one of those spiders that have a huge butt.  You know, not a long skinny spider, the kind with a big butt!  I have never been so glad to see a spider in my life!

Can you imagine if that big ol’ thing was on me!?!  *shiver*

I came back into the house and changed into my bee stuff.  It was time to mow around the bees now.

This was relatively uneventful.  That is, until I had to mow directly in front of and around the hives themselves.

The bees are very busy this time of year.  They are frantically trying to get all the last little tidbits that they can before the cold weather hits.  Mowing in front of their hives blocks their traffic pattern.  They do not like that.

So, I am mowing as quickly as possible in front of the hives and I have bees attacking me.  “Ping!  Ping!  Ping!”  The bees were bounding off the screen around my head.  They were doing their darnedest to get to my face and sting me.

Poor things.  Can’t say I really blame them for being upset.  It had to be done, though.  I did try to hurry.

That is my adventure in mowing today.  It was so much fun (well, except for the spider part!).