Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Environmentally sound

When I went to cut the grass for the first time this season I found my hand mower in a distressing state...

You see, some years back we made a decision on lawn care.
The decision was to simplify. The lawn is too big. So barring moving we wanted to find a way to make it easier for us as we get older (oh..shushies).

I was getting tired of doing full tune ups to small engines each spring. At the time we had two tractors (yup…one for cutting one for hauling) a self propelled hand mower, weed whacker and leaf blower. It was a fleet.
It was… a pain in the ass.

So – Plan A was to get rid of all the equipment and hire a lawn service.
I spent an entire season trying to get accustomed to having a service.
‘Pros’:
- we no longer had to cut the grass
- no more spring tune ups for the fleet
- no more breaking down in the middle of a cut…and wondering how to finish

'Cons':
- no control over the schedule (the lawn should be tidy before entertaining)
- no control over quality (patterning, trimming, clippings etc)
- no control over mishaps (don't get me started)
- the weekly cost(very pricey)

Cost... and me being a control freak led to Plan B.

Plan B was to buy a new tractor… with the caveat to have it serviced each year.
We bought an electric string trimmer -- no engine to deal with (of course we had to make some adjustments to the gardens and edges so that an electric trimmer would suffice) and we bought a non-self propelled hand mower (cheaper, less to break).

Welp. Its seems that ‘servicing’ said hand mower sorta fell through the cracks.
This spring I found it sitting in a puddle of its own oil, gummed up and unwilling to turn over.
Hmm.
I went back out the week after, and tried more fervently to get it to go. Cuz you know, sometimes if you pull harder or faster that works.
Nothing.
I tried just this past weekend again. Just to be sure.
Its over folks.
I could probably have it fixed up for just under a hundred bucks… but that would still leave us with a gas engine to deal with.
Pfft.
So as an amendment to Plan B – we will add THIS to our fleet.

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