Posts Tagged ‘riding mower’
Welcome Home
Guess what I have to do with a certain urgency before we escape to the lake place for a ten-day getaway?
I had a nice visit with the mechanic at my local bike shop about his experience with Trek Domane e-bikes. He wasn’t aware of any issues with the fastening hardware. I left my bike with them, though he didn’t expect they would get to it before Thursday.
While we were talking, he was on his computer, opening a potential warranty issue with Trek on my behalf. It would be really lovely if I could be refunded the expense of the labor to remedy the sheared bolt and noisy bottom bracket.
Maybe I just pedal too powerfully for the steel fasteners.
Today, I’ll ride my mower instead of my bike, but I’ll be thinking about the friends I’ve been hanging out with over the last week, enjoying the residual energy of their happy faces and our joyful laughter.
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Not Panicking
Just because my pet maple tree that we transplanted to the middle of the labyrinth hasn’t sprouted leaves yet, while almost every other tree around has, we’ve chosen not to panic. New buds are visible, but they just haven’t made as much progress as we expect at this point. There are a small number of other trees of a variety of species that are similarly delayed compared to the majority of broadleaved trees and bushes around here, so there is that. It’s not alone.
Since we have been enduring a long span of hot, dry, sunny days, our cool-headed response to the situation was to put a watering bag around the trunk to keep the little guy well-hydrated. We are hoping to see visible progress of advancing leaf buds soon.
I had another opportunity to not panic yesterday afternoon while mowing. As my confidence and control on the zero-turn riding mower have improved, I find myself pushing beyond some of my previous boundaries. I’ve started mowing a half-swath beside some of our pathways with the deck at the highest setting to control the walkway narrowing from tall grass on the sides bending over into the lane.
Cutting it back with the riding mower is a great improvement over my previous effort of walking along and swinging the hedge trimmer blades across the too-tall grasses after the fact. That is laborious, back-aching work.
While making a first pass along the edge of our path around the back pasture and hay field, the front wheels suddenly jumped, and the mower deck bottomed out on a tall mound. The mower was pointed down into a bunch of scrub brush trees along the drainage swale. With the deck stuck on the mound, the drive wheels had no grip on the ground. I couldn’t move forward or reverse.
I do believe my years of experience were revealed in a complete lack of cursing and tantruming. I simply walked all the way back to the shop and got the ATV and a come-along. After a couple of futile tries, I realized I needed Cyndie’s help. I pulled out my phone to call her and found she had texted me.
“We’re walking off leash & see you on ATV- need help?”
Since she has never operated the zero-turn, I offered her the ATV, and I spun the wheels on the mower. Nope. No progress, but I had a hunch.
I asked her to try the mower, and I got on the ATV. The throttle just needed to be goosed with a little more oomph, and we pulled it right off that mound.
When success comes without having put myself through the angst of getting overly upset at the outset, the reward of solving the dilemma is that much sweeter.
It pays not to panic.
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Rough Start
The day dawned full of promise yesterday, and I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish. The biggest thing I ended up accomplishing was overcoming a series of frustrations in the morning that threatened to derail my whole day. It was one of those times when an attempt to knock off a few easy tasks backfires because one thing after another goes badly until it seems like each failure is feeding off the one before it.
The head of a screw breaking off is annoying but the steel tines of a bedding fork snapping at the handle was uncalled for.
I switched to something with less risk of failure. Beyond shredding the flesh of my forearms on tangles of bramble, the hauling away of the piles of vines we have been extracting the last few weeks was the beginning of a trend of success for me. In addition to the vines, while we were in that mode of hauling, we accomplished a couple more loads of piles of branches that litter our woods.
Eventually, it became time to crank up the riding mower to conquer some of the lawn grass that has been doubling in height by the day lately. We won’t be participating in any no-mow-May campaigns this year. My mowing started in April.
Cyndie thought the mowing tracks in the grass were worth a picture.
I was pleased with my ability to minimize muddy skidding in wet areas on my first time operating the zero-turn in many months.
Today, I hope to tackle the labyrinth with the push mower in preparation for World Labyrinth Day on Saturday. It will depend on the 50% chance of rain being forecast. Timing is everything. If I had mowed too many days before the event, the grass is growing so fast this time of year that it would be longer than we want.
The grass in the pastures is already getting beyond the rate of the horses’ grazing, and they are spending most of their time out there. Granted, I spotted a fair amount of napping going on on the high slope of the hay field, so not all their time out there is being spent gobbling grass blades.
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June Fourth
What makes June Fourth so special? It’s Cyndie’s birthday!! We are not old or anything, compared to everyone older than us, but when you qualify for Medicare in the U.S., it suddenly feels like you are older than ever. Well, older than you’ve ever been before.
It feels wrong to be doing anything other than celebrating my lovely wife today but there are weeds to be cut, you know. We are meeting Cyndie’s mom and our kids for brunch, but after that, it’s back to the battle against allowing weeds to go to seed.
I don’t know how many versions of this photo I have posted over the last ten years, but it’s a view that truly captures my experience for hours on end.
I worked the string trimmer along the fence line, around the round pen, and along the deep washouts of the drainage swale. I used the Greenworks riding mower to knock down weeds in the round pen and along the inside of the fence line. Finally, I pulled the brush cutter behind the diesel tractor to cut the back pasture. Among the multiple weeds battling for dominance against grasses in the field, thistle is the one we are keeping at bay by mowing.
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In the background of the photo with the cleanly trimmed fence line, you can spot the little maple tree that is in the center of the labyrinth.
This morning we opened the gate to the back pasture, giving the horses access to all that cut grass. They took little notice after finishing the feed in their pans and lolled around near the fans under the overhang. It’s not uncomfortably hot yet this early in the day, but the humidity is noticeable and those big-body mares know the heat will build faster by the minute.
I expect we’ll find them out there soon enough. They have a good sense about the opening of gates around their confines.
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Latest Addition
We have another new tool for managing our landscape. I have tried three different methods of cutting the grass path of the labyrinth, starting with a reel mower. The grass grew too fast for the spinning scissor mechanism to keep up. Next up was the Stihl power trimmer. It worked well enough but took a long time (hours) and used up a fair amount of plastic line and multiple tanks of gas. It was a real workout.
The new tool, a 21″ electric push mower, seems like it will be the winner for this job. The third time’s the charm.
I couldn’t stop smiling after I finished the job in just 40 minutes, exhausting only one of the two batteries it holds.
There are a couple of spots where I hope to adjust the rocks to optimize the exercise. There is one small portion that is probably an inch too narrow and several where the width is wide enough I needed to back up and make a second pass. Most of the curving pathway is perfect for an easy walking push directly along the route. Adjusting the entire distance for a perfect width will make the job even more fun than it already is.
I’ve been contemplating a push mower as an alternative to the yard tractor for areas in our front yard where there are obstacles and slopes that are tricky to navigate. When I found an electric model that would fit well in the labyrinth and got Julian to bring one he owns for a test, the decision became pretty easy to make.
By the way, this manufacturer offers riding mowers, too. Hmm. No more oil changes, dirty air filters, spark plugs, fuel…
It’s tempting.
Even though there are other things I was hoping to accomplish today, all I really want to do is mow the tricky part of the front yard with the newest addition to our collection of yard maintenance tools. Somewhat reminiscent of a boy with a new toy.
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Battling Growth
Sometimes it does feel a little like a battle against a siege of growing greenery. The lawn grass that I cut with the borrowed mower the other day now looks like I’ve neglected it for a couple of weeks. Now imagine what the areas that haven’t been cut at all look like.
The two pastures we refer to as “back” and “north,” are over two feet tall. I was just starting to mow the back pasture last Saturday when the sound from the brush cutter caused me to stop and check on the gear box. There’s some serious mowing left to be done back there still.
Yesterday afternoon, Cyndie laid down some pool noodles in the arena space to do an exercise with the horses. She said it didn’t work very well because the grass was too tall and it was hard to see the noodles. I decided to get that cut before resuming work with the brush cutter.
First, I needed to sharpen and adjust the blades on the reel mower for Cyndie so she could use it on the labyrinth. Seriously, there is nowhere that doesn’t need mowing right now, pretty much on an every-other-day basis.
We try to keep the arena grass as short as possible, usually mowing it with the rider. I ventured in there after dinner last night with the borrowed tractor and quickly discovered the grass had grown a lot longer than was noticeable from a distance.
It was so long and thick in places that I needed to make a first pass at a high setting, to enable mowing it a second time at the lowest one.
While I did laps on the rider, Cyndie worked the fence line with the power trimmer.
A couple of soldiers fighting the good fight for order and scenic well-being against the growing chaos and unwelcome infestations.
Seriously, it’s like landscape warfare.
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Relative Something 