The grass is coming down!

A couple of months ago Mike was mowing our back yard with the lawn mower that someone bought us for our wedding a year ago. Our back yard is full of limestone rocks, and as you can imagine, Mike ran over one and the blade on the mower bent pretty bad. After fidgeting around with it trying to get it to start again he discovered that oil had gotten into the air filter, so we went and bought a new filter and a new blade. Turns out the shaft* was bent too, so now our mower cut so deep into the grass when it mowed, it pretty much balded our entire backyard of the only grass it had. It looked really sad. :(

So, a month later my sister got a new lawn mower and told us we could have another one that had been given to her, but that a part was broken on it we would need to fix. Turns out that with the cost of labor, the part would cost almost as much as it would cost us to buy a new mower.

Mike's dad mentioned that our church had a riding lawn mower that had only been used once or twice since it was bought two years ago, and we could have it if it worked. So we went up to the church last night with Mike's tool bag and some jumper cables to see about getting this beast to start. Mike pulled the seat up and worked on it for a while, trying everything: charging the battery, adding new gasoline, cleaning the spark plugs, spraying some starter fluid on it--you know...all the important stuff. And every time he tried to start it, it would turn and sound like it wanted to start, but the poor thing just couldn't catch its breath to start. :( After Mike said he'd tried everything he knew, he unattaches the jumper cables from the truck, then says, "You know, some lawn mowers have to have the seat down for it to start." I just looked at him dumbfounded like "We've been sitting here for 30 minutes and the problem was THAT easy?!" Of course when he set the seat back down, it started right up! I almost wanted to get out of the truck and do a little jig! So we hauled that beast home.

Meanwhile, our poor grass has grown about a foot high and I'm pretty sure I have even heard a few neighbors snickering under their breath as we drive by and talk about how WE are the ones making the value of the homes in our neighborhood go down because we are letting our grass stay high. Excuse us if we have had some minor lawn mower technical difficulties. I can assure you that the grass will be mowed today. Calm down people!

*Any attempt to sound lawn mower intellectual is merely coicidental. I am only quoting my husband on these terms.