Posts Tagged ‘lawn mower’
Daylong Soaking
In the hours that I had dreamed my friends and I would be enjoying the surrounding countryside from our bicycles, the atmosphere was crying cold tears. It was a cruel follow-up to the flash flooding we endured two days prior.
It rained and rained here yesterday. Sometimes waves of serious drops fell for a few minutes, but before and after them came a steady drool of H2O that mercilessly soaked an already over-saturated landscape.
Cyndie’s mud-swamped garden became more of a fountain of running water, moving her to proclaim the location a loss for her flowering vision.
We will contemplate a different spot for her dozens of perennial beauties, somewhere as eye-catching as that bend in the driveway, but not so directly in the line of drainage.
The afternoon lent itself to some serious power-lounging around the fireplace. I closed my eyes and happily entered dreamland on the couch, then woke up to do some virtual shopping and curious research on lawn tractors. I have found multiple ways to nurse along the used Craftsman tractor that we acquired with the purchase of this property four mowing seasons ago. I think it’s had enough.
I think the engine blew a gasket last Friday. Diagnosis and repair of this malady deserves someone more learned than me, and the time constraints I am facing. The grass cutting was only partially completed when the engine revved and the white smoke billowed. Growth is happening at maximum speed this time of year.
We’re gonna need a new mower fast. There is no shortage of water providing thirsty blades of grass with all they care to drink. The front end of our property needs mowing almost before I’ve finished the last rows at the back.
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That Guy
I don’t think I’m that guy, but Cyndie says I might be. One of the reasons I have historically eschewed gas-powered equipment comes from the demands of maintaining the machines. If a device is electric, and all I need to do is turn it on to use it and back off when I’m done, that would suit me just fine. Maybe change the brushes if you keep it long enough, or take care of the batteries if it’s got ’em, but that’s about it.
It’s all the stinky gasoline, oil, air filters, fuel filters, and spark plugs of gas-powered engines that weighs on me. I don’t want to deal with them, so I wait. But how long can I get away with avoiding it without suffering performance problems? I prefer to have my machines functioning at their peak.
After putting our Craftsman lawn tractor through rather rough use, and suffering the consequences of a frustrating degradation in performance, I’ve adjusted my attitude about the machine.
Ironically, this ends up being less about the gas engine and more about the general use of the machine as a lawn mower. I really did use the thing with reckless abandon, mowing over rocks and sticks, heading down our rustic trails and over sharp drop offs, sometimes into wet areas where there was standing water.
The mower responded accordingly, bending and breaking when limits were exceeded.
I figured it was a piece of crap and that I should look into getting a heavy-duty commercial grade machine that could take such abuse. A mechanic at my favorite hardware store helped me to see it otherwise.
We already own a power trimmer. I should be using that appliance in all the afore-mentioned rough areas. My lawn mower is designed to cut lawn grass. If I use it as designed, it will do the job well.
In the past, when I finished driving the mower through all the abuse, I parked it and walked away, glad to be done with that nuisance of a chore. I was aware that grass would collect and build up under the mower deck, but it was hard to access, so I saved it for some other time.
I was tired, and the mowing was done. The last thing I wanted to do was mess with the job of clean up.
I wasn’t that guy.
Well, not entirely. Not yet, anyway.
Maybe I’m getting closer. Yesterday, Anneliese saw me cleaning the mower deck and asked if it had gotten plugged. That made total sense to my old way of thinking. You clean it when it stops working well.
Not any more.
No, it wasn’t plugged. Since the informative visit with the mechanic who gladly sells me products and services, I have changed my methods. I pull off the deck after each mowing, flip it over, and clean out the accumulated gunk, before the mower ever gets even close to plugging.
The same as the way that guy would do it.
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Tractor Timber
Despite the inherent risks in dealing with trees that have blown over, but remain hung up in the branches of other trees beside them, I chose to see if I could push them over using the loader on our tractor.
Whether or not it made any sense to try, I forged ahead on the idea that it just might work.
First, I needed to attach the loader bucket that I’ve recently taken to storing at one end of the hay shed.
The following is pretty much how the previous week unfolded for me, in terms of frustrations.
As I approached the hay shed on the tractor, I realized the trailer on the back of the truck was parked directly in front of the spot I needed to reach. Keys to the truck were up at the house.
I caught sight of Cyndie just crossing the yard and shouted to ask if she could grab the keys.
She turned the key and the starter stuttered the staccato clatter of “not enough battery.”
“Not again! Not now!”
For some unidentified reason, this happens at very unpredictable odd intervals. The truck needed to have its battery charged again. It was parked far enough away that it would require an extension cord, and then I realized the nearest outlet was dead because I had borrowed the circuit breaker last fall to use for the waterer over the winter.
I swapped out the breaker, got the battery charging, and decided to do some lawn mowing. All that served to do was intensify my frustration over the odd problem of the middle blade not cutting and the outside blades cutting low. Something more than just a broken bracket must have gone wrong when it failed last week.
I did the bare minimum of ugly mowing and then put it away to start the truck.
All that frustration before I could get to the task I intended.
Compared to those hassles, the rest of my project went swimmingly. I pulled up to the trees, lifted the bucket to test the weight, and after an initial slip, successfully pushed the trees over with a resounding crash.
Yikes. It was both scary and satisfying.
Most of all, it wasn’t frustrating.
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Relative Something 