Betsie Lawnbott

So, I am sitting here right now with a guy from CBS “Sunday Morning” with his camera pointing at me. “We want to film you updating your blog.” Ok…. They have been here since about 12:30 pm filming and interviewing me about Betsie. I was filmed “updating my blog” so, here it is. I had to cheat a bit and edit this later since it’s hard to think about blogging when you’re on camera. I found a friend to chat to via IM to keep the ‘keyboard sounds’ coming steadily.

Just as we finished filming my interview and some shots of Betsie just mowing a lawn maintenance crew came drove up to take care of another yard on the cul-de-sac. The producer and camera guy started talking with them too. They thought it was pretty funny. I couldn’t hear much of the conversation, but they didn’t seem too worried about being put out of business by robots. “They’re slow! They can’t make the patterns in the grass!” Well, guys, speed isn’t too important when my lawnmower is ultra quiet and can run all night.

Then a rain storm came in and now there is thunder and lightning. It’s pouring, so I am pretty sure that Betsie went home when her rain sensor tripped.

I don’t know when we will be on TV, but I’ll be sure to keep everyone posted. It might be in the next 3 weeks. The segment is about the History of Lawn Mowers… so I guess we’ll be near the end. Sunday Morning is a national show, and they’re planning to mention this website. Hence, we’re moving again (not really, the the old address will still mirror) to betsielawnbott.com.

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It has been a few months since I’ve updated everyone about Betsie’s latest news. Truth is, there isn’t much to tell! Things are going very smoothly.

I wired the back yard last month. Even though it is very uneven and doesn’t have much grass I can now let Betsie play back there by herself. Our goal is to reseed or lay turf some day. The soil is mostly hard packed clay… so it is definitely going to need some work before we have nice grass.

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I’m surprised the neighbors haven’t knocked on the door yet and asked me what happen to Betsie. Her battery charger stopped working a while ago. I just got the new one today (thanks KA!) and the lawn should be back in shape very shortly. The battery needs to recharge good though.

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IMG00281.JPG

Originally uploaded by sajego.

Somehow Betsie lost the yellow plastic part that covered the hole where the light shines through. I think I need to cover it with something….

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Little bit of side yard

Originally uploaded by sajego.

We have this little section of yard to the side of the driveway. It’s probably 5 or 6 feet wide by 20-30 feet long. I didn’t want to run wires across the driveway in 2 places so Betsie can’t get there on her own. I try to remember to put her over there when it gets long.

I was gone for a work trip last week and when I left her wire wasn’t making a closed circuit. So she didn’t mow all week. This morning she got through the side yard and then finished 42% of the front yard before going home to charge.

I want to wire the back yard sometime, but it’s very uneven and doesn’t have much grass. When we get the money we are going to have it graded for drainage and probably lay new turf. Next year I think… we’re still catching up with fixing up the inside of the house this year.

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Spring view of our house (with apple tree)

Originally uploaded by sajego.

Home ownership suits me. I love how the house looks this spring. The fun part about moving into a new home in the fall is that you don’t have any idea what kind of plants there might be. It turns out we have 2 pear trees, the pink in the front I think is an apple tree, the (mini) Japaneses maple out front is deep red that matches the shutters. There are azaleas all over and purple ground cover flowers. And the yard, it’s the best yard on our street, most of them are sloped or a lot smaller.

You can see Betsie in there too. The yard has dried out enough to mow and she’s caught up again, 82% after 2 hours and 45 minutes yesterday. She stopped for some reason this morning and didn’t make it home. I don’t know why. I found her near the maple when I got home this afternoon and her battery was almost dead so I carried her home.

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To mark the one year anniversary of this blog (coming up the end of the month) I’ve moved it. Handily, one of the default themes at our new home is grass-based!

A Betsie update? Well, it rained cats and dogs and bluejays last weekend, so I’m still waiting for the yard to dry out a bit before Bets gets back to her duties.

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I think the kids who mow my neighbor’s yard are going to like havng Betsie around doing mine. Because mine is always short hers is pretty much always long… thus she will call them more to mow it. I hope they get paid for their time 🙂

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I sent Betsie out to mow today. She got stuck once on the hill going up to my neighbors, I adjusted the wire. I filled in some spots along the sidewalk where they dug our yard up to put in new cable (tv) cables last fall. It was a bit uneven and she looked like she might get stuck. Then I got to work on setting up an overhead view webcam of the yard from the upstairs window. My “office” is up there, but no computer. So I spent the afternoon trying to get the old Dell Latitude laptop (made in 2000) working again. The network card wasn’t working and I discovered what a pain Cisco can be about driver downloads (hint, use bugmenot). I finally ended up using a USB wifi adapter I had laying around… and now I remember why I bought that desk top last year to replace this old laptop. But enough rambling about computer stuff…. There’s a webcam link up at http://sjg.sytes.net:8080/

However, Betsie finished her work, so there is nothing to see until 23 or so hours from now (6ish EDT on Sunday)

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We got back from a ski trip to find 80 degree weather in Virginia!

Betsie is out mowing, but as we cut the grass so (too) short back in the
fall there isn’t much to cut yet except for some weeds.

I’d like to do some overseeding out front and seed the back but haven’t
come up with a plan of attack yet. There are so many things to do since
this is a new house for us, I’m not sure the yard is due for attention
(ie money) yet.

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