Sam mows the lawn

Our lawn has turned into a wilderness, and this week, we decided it was time to do something about it. So we did what any Armenian couple would do in our place, we bought a scythe. 

However, it turns out that we bought a really crappy scythe, which wouldn't hold together properly with the fasteners that were sold with it. We were trying to figure out a solution to this in a low-key kind of way, but it wasn't exactly top of our to-do list. I was walking Hazel yesterday afternoon when a man called me over to him and said he had seen us bring the scythe home and wanted to know if we had used it yet. I told him that we hadn't because we couldn't get the blade to attach  to the handle properly- well, I gesticulated wildly and made some sound effects, and that seemed to do the trick because the man then told me that when my husband came home, we should bring the scythe to his house and he would fix it for us. 

Excited about this, when Sam came home from school that afternoon, we set out to this man's house carrying the scythe. But we didn't get to ask him for help, because before we even reached his house, another man walked up to us, asked us what we wanted (I don't know, we're just walking along the street, do we need to want something??), and when we showed him the problems with the scythe handle, he called his buddy over to check it out, and his buddy told us to come with him.

It turns out this last man is named Sasoon, and lives only a few doors down from us. He's a cabinet maker and has a great little woodworking shop in his basement/garage area. He spent about 10 minutes jamming wood slivers into the loose fitting at the base of the scythe before handing it back to Sam, telling him to soak it in water overnight and then use it tomorrow. He wouldn't even take any money for this work and materials. Instead, we promised to bake him some American style cookies. 

So, we went home, put the scythe in water, and then this morning Sam got to work:

It's actually pretty impressive to see in action. I'm looking forward to having some space that's more like a lawn and less like a field outside our house.