A Chronology of Lawnmowers

This post is dedicated to David Thompson our former neighbor who loves a yard like none other...and he loves Virginia as much as we do.  He also went to the other well-known school in Virginia and loves to constantly remind of us this fact :)

So our lawnmower just couldn't keep up.  We moved from a postage stamp of a yard where it took more time to get the lawn tools out of the garage than it did to actually cut the lawn to more than 1/2 acre of lawn.  Now let me be clear in the past 6  years lawn care has not been an activity I participated in personally.  For some reason ladies in Atlanta did not do lawn mowing.  Maybe it is the Scarlet O'Hara influence??  Where I grew up every woman did lawn mowing, I did it, my mom did it, my aunts did it.  No one actually hired out lawn care...gasp!!

I personally was banished from lawn mowing when I destroyed Ed's childhood mower on the sewer cleanout in our Atlanta yard.  Now you have to understand that Ed is not in favor of buying much in the way of home appliances new; he sees no point to spend large sums of money on something that is going to get beat up and dirty.  We still have our gas grill from 11 years ago(we keep replacing the burners) and that lawn mower I mentioned.....it really was from his childhood.  He seriously was sad when I bent the axle on that thing.

So in support of Ed's habit of recycled lawn equipment my Dad provided another "used" lawnmower to satiate Ed's need to not spend money on such things back in the 2007 timeframe.  Honestly in Atlanta it would be a bit silly to invest in much of a lawn mowing machine....you could have done it with a focused weed eater.  Now this mower had a  few "modifications".  The handle hardware had long given out and in lieu of hardware a permanent weld had been put in place.  I had also gently run the car into the lawnmower wheel at one point and Ed had straightened that damage out.  Ed also discovered today that the air filter was missing from the beast too.

A good weld and a failed weld.  Note the absence of hardware.

Don't think that is going to cut it.

The past week when my parents were here they had both attempted to mow our new lawn with "the beast" and it had whipped my Mom and Dad both; my Mom had even suggested upgrading the lawn mower to a self propelled version.  Now I can't even begin to tell you how guilty one feels when their middle aged parents are out mowing the lawn in their new home....but read a past post about the motivation level of the women in my family.  Once they get an idea in their head there is not stopping them.....I am dead serious about this.  Same holds true for my Dad's family as well.  I recall working on a front porch railing project at the age of about 8 with my grandmother with spot lights at night in the summer because she would not quit nor let anyone else.

So the it was time to cut the grass again today and Ed decided to see how far he could get at lunch time in the 30 minutes he had to devote to the activity.  After spending 10 minutes walking the yard trying to find the missing air filter he decided to give up on that and just cut.  After a few minutes of mowing the mower took on a strange wobble and he noticed the permanent welds had failed.

Now Ed being Ed he was really wanting to find another used mower but the lawn really really needed cut and endeavors such as Craigslist need some time to cultivate a good deal.  We also don't really know any of our neighbors well enough to ask to borrow their prime piece of lawn equipment so this evening was devoted to finding *gasp* a NEW mower.

Pulling up in front of Lowes Ed immediately noticed the pile of push-mowers off to the side labeled "repaired"....he had found his nirvana in a sea of new mowers.  The salesman convinced us of the lawn-worthiness of these machines and off we went with our mostly new self propelled 7HP 22' cutting blade John Deere lawn mower and $150 more bucks in our account than if we had bought new.

Preparing for the inaugural ride. Love that John Deere Green! 

Ed started mowing at 8pm and got 95% of the way through the lawn by 9:15.  He said it was so much easier with the new machine and the lawn in darkness(my only viewing choice) looks great.  Thanks Mom for convincing him to get a new machine, maybe you won't have to cut our grass any more!!