Adventures In Lawn Care

I've been a bit negligent of my lawn as of late. When I originally got injured, my wife was doing all the mowing. She must have recently decided that I was healed enough to start mowing but failed to inform me of this fact, because our lawn was out of control! All the rain and heat we've been having lately only exacerbated the problem.

Did I mention that the grass is wet, too? Apparently the tall grass provides enough shade from the sun that water from the rain and sprinklers never really evaporates. Since our crappy push mower would have choked and died on all this tall, wet grass I asked Ted if I could borrow their riding mower.

Another interesting tidbit: foot-tall grass is able to conceal a lot of things I forgot were there. I almost immediately happened upon our dog's tie-out.

Thank goodness for quality cable-cutters, or I never would have gotten that fucking thing untangled.

After I got that straightened out, it became apparent that the bagger on the lawn mower was going to be useless. The tube leading from the chute to the bag kept getting plugged up. It was quite frustrating, and my fingernails were turning green.

I finally decided to remove the bagger and just shoot the clippings out the side of the mower, let them dry for a while, then drive back over them later with the bagger to bag them up. You know what they say about the best-laid plans, right?

Everything was going great. I had just finished mowing and was about to hook up the bagger when the mower belt snapped (that's the thing that makes the blades go roundy-round). Son of a bitch! I tried two hardware stores and neither had the correct belt, it was starting to get dark out, and my lawn looked like I was preparing to bail hay. Wonderful.

To top it off, the mower has hit so many rocks in its lifetime that it no longer cuts evently, so even after all that, it still looked like shit.

My only option was to get out the push mower to clean up all the clippings. The bag on this mower is so small that I had to empty it after almost every single swath through the yard. I wasn't even able to do any additional mowing to level out the uneven-ness because the mower deck had to be on its highest setting in order to suck up the giant rows of clippings. Any lower and it just pushed them around.

4.5 hours later, I have lawn that still looks like shit, but is now shorter.

Kristin says I get to mow again tomorrow.