Yard Work

What a day yesterday was.  It is something I do not like to admit to myself, let alone anyone else, but I am not as young as I used to be.  My head thinks I am, but my body tells me quick smart that that is not true.
I had calculated what I wanted to achieve.  It involved whipper sniping, mowing, cutting down seed pods and blower vacing.  I knew the cutting down of the seed pods could prove difficult but I whipper sniped first. 
The whipper snipper did not get into the cracks.  Well maybe it could have, but my experience with that whipper snipper has been a little less than desired.  It is lite and battery operated and that is good.  Instead of string it has attachments.  That has been bad.  They are prone to flying off at the most inappropriate times.  Apparently, they were having trouble deciding if attaching them would be easy or hard.  When it is easy the attachments fly off incredibly regularly.  It is not like “well that is inconvenient, I will attach it again.”  No, the attachments fly away and inhabit secret places.  Another attachment is required.  When they are from the same batch the same thing happens. 
I ended up on my hands and knees weeding.  There was way more to whipper snippering than I thought.  The battery ran out of power.  I did not have another, but there was one on hand, so I “finished” (using the term “finished” really loosely.)
I then tackled cutting down the seed pods.  They are pods on palms and each contain hundreds of seeds.  The seeds were clunking on the deck and going into the pool.  Potentially that meant thousands of seeds in the pool.  It had to be done.  It is a yearly occurrence.
I had a tool that reaches really high, and pulling on an attached rope engages the cutting mechanism.  It was definitely the right tool except for a couple of problems.  My balance is shot.  To look above me I need to be sitting down or leaning on something.  One of the pods was just too high.  If I failed to latch onto the pod the device came crashing down.  I had intended to complete to pods near the pool and the two on the verge.  I ended up doing just the ones near the pool.  When the pod was up high, I could not always get the thing to cut.  One pod in particular gave me trouble.  The tree does not look as good as it did because of my yanking.  Eventually the job was done.  It became personal.  I was going to beat that thing no matter the cost.  The cost was high.
Someone else was moved with compassion and did the blower vacing.  Except the power ran out.  The charger was still on red when I decided to see how long it would last.  It lasted right up until I had a couple of meters to go.   Then it died.
I had an appointment, so I mowed.  The mower ended up on a higher setting than I would have liked, as it would conk out if it saw the grass as too thick.  It was conking out a lot.
I was glad it was appointment time as I was getting cramps in both arms.  That is a sign of heat exhaustion.  I kept the water up, but not enough apparently.  Besides, I am more prone to that these days.
I normally get home around 11.30am.  Yesterday it was 2.30pm.  Sleep was sweet.