Tuesday afternoon, my new John Deere arrived. I was as giddy as an eight-year-old on Christmas morning when the Lowe’s guys unloaded it from the truck and rolled it into the garage for me. I was ready to hop on board and start cutting the grass right away, but it needed gas and I figured I ought to read the operator’s manual first, having never used a lawn tractor before. I settled for sitting in the seat instead and playing with the controls.
Maybe I am eight years old…
We decided to wait until Saturday to cut the grass. Finally, the big day rolled around, so I broke out the manual–and realized there was a lot more work involved than simply filling the gas tank, turning the key, and pushing my foot down on the pedal. We had to level the mowing deck and adjust the wheels, a process that took a good 90 minutes. And then, when it was finally all ready to go, I fired it up, engaged the mower deck…
…and was greeted with the most godawful racket imaginable. It sounded like the engine was either tearing up the driveway or about to fall off. Well, that didn’t seem right, so we killed the ignition, rolled it back into the garage, and tinkered around with it some more, but “tinkering” really just meant staring at it blankly as if a solution would magically appear. We ended up rolling it back out to the lawn, started it up again, and the same thing happened.
“Maybe that’s just the noise it makes when you lower the mower deck,” Tara said, and before I could even reply, she hopped on and took off across the yard. As soon as she started moving, the grinding, screeching noise stopped.
Son of a gun…
I’ll admit I was a bit green with envy that my wife got to ride it first, but my turn came soon enough.
Obviously there’s a steep learning curve here. Once I hopped on and started cruising around the yard, I was able to get a pretty good feel for how she handles. It’s just as much fun as I’d imagined!
Not only do we have a big yard, but there are lots of trees and garden beds and ponds and all kinds of obstacles, and oh yeah, a slope, too. Which seems a helluva lot higher (read: scarier) when you’re on the lawn tractor and paranoid about tipping over. But she did just fine and our grass is now a respectable height instead of knee-deep in places. The whole thing took nearly two hours, but I’m sure a lot of that was just getting used to the John Deere. I suspect it’ll go more quickly next time, but it’s still going to require a serious commitment every week or two.
Small price to pay for a yard like this.
Turns out Dick has different themed garden areas, including high desert (cactus and yucca) and coastal rainforest (ferns and nettle). The man was apparently a landscaping genius, and we’re lucky enough to be able to reap the benefits.
We actually spoke to his wife, Carol, this afternoon. The ponds remain a big mystery: there are underground hoses and some kind of elaborate recirculating waterfall system, but we haven’t been able to figure any of it out. She said she’d have Dick come over sometime to show us how it all works.
That’s the nice thing about buying a house from somebody who didn’t die in it.
Mark My Words 
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