Tools or toys?

Fall. It's like going back to school. Traveling and summer play time are done. Time to get back to work. The projects that have been left for a rainy day can now be done. One project has waited maybe a little too long this year. Raking. Growing up in Colorado I never raked leaves. Our largest tree was maybe six feet tall. The seedlings my Dad had planted around the property I remember dragging three connected hoses around the yard to water, but not raking. We moved to NH and our first house had about 1/3 of an acre to rake, but hubby cleared most of the trees so we could mostly mulch. This new house has a lot of grassy areas. We only rake in front of the stream but there is the South yard, the back yard, the front yard, then up by tree and fruit trees, then all around the raspberry patch. Phew! Tired just thinking about it. I have a little sweeper that fits on the back of our lawn tractor. The problem is that if the leaves get more than a couple of inches deep you can't make it across the yard without overfilling the sweeper bag which starts to cause a fire as the leaves back up... That point passed maybe a month ago. So the alternate way was with rakes and sheets and lots and lots of sweat and elbow grease. Or??? Yup. Leaf blower. Probably a little embarassing, but it is saving time and at very least a lot of sweat and elbow grease.
We got the backpack version because holding a twelve pound machine would get old after about twenty minutes. Hubby was able to blow the south yard and the back yard yesterday. Hopefully we can get the upper yard done today. I think the front yard will still have to be done the old fashioned way since there is nowhere to blow to, but it is the smallest so I am o.k. with that!

I took the day to rearrange the office. I didn't like that my upstairs computer had to be on for us to print anything. I also didn't like running up and down the stairs to have to turn the computer on, remember to turn the computer off, go get the print job... So, I got a wifi printer/fax/copeir thingy- about two months ago. Thought it was about time to hook it up. Sounds easy, but it involved moving the Vonage hub and cable modem across the room, then moving the wireless router down into the bar where I have the wifi printer.

Hubby has also been operating out of a postal box (the kind Lizzy likes to sleep in!) So I moved his desk out of the cottage and up to the office. They both fit along the windowed wall so we both have a view!
I still need to take a trip to the used office supply store to get yet another filing cabinet for me- thanks to Uncle Sam who makes me keep 7 years of paper for the biz (about two file boxes a year!). and of course, bring the USPS their boxes back! (oops!)

Then we move on the ever fun project of diggin down a couple of feet to put wire mesh and gravel around the outside of the coop to keep out the weasels that have begun tunneling in (frat-a-rata-frata...)