My town embraces Less Mow May (a compromise for those who don’t want to commit to NO mowing at all this month). I’m all for protecting the pollinators, but this is ridiculous.
Letting our grass grow this tall wasn’t intentional. I’d planned on cutting it last weekend, but when I fired up the John Deere for his inaugural spring run earlier this month, I once again ended up with deep ruts and grooves all over the yard. I’d originally attributed this to soggy soil, and then under-inflated tires, but the weather has dried up and the tires are at full PSI now, so it was pretty apparent something else was going on.
“It’s pretty apparent something else is going on,” I said to Tara.
I’d noticed the deck on the riding mower was uneven, so I grabbed a wrench to straighten it out. When I dropped to my hands and knees and peered beneath the undercarriage, I discovered why my lawn tractor is tearing up the yard with each pass.
One side of the mower deck is perfectly fine. Technically that’s the passenger side, I guess, though there’s only one seat, so the only place I can fit an extra rider is on my lap. The other (driver’s) side, it turns out, is missing the nut and trunnion that connect the bolt to the deck, leaving it dangling haplessly, which causes the deck to drag against the turf every time I make a left turn. Which is pretty often, judging by those donuts in the yard. Not good for the grass, and definitely not good for the mower.
@%^$!
Initially, we blamed the local repair shop. Last year, I ran over a sharp piece of metal, bending the blade and busting the spindle, putting JD out of commission for five weeks. It appeared that they had forgotten to reattach a key component after replacing those parts. And maybe they did, but we got the mower back in June, and I didn’t experience any problems until August, so it’s possible it was there all along but fell off. Though if that’s the case, I still blame the repair shop, because it means the nut and trunnion weren’t tightened enough.
Anyhoo. John Deere doesn’t sell the replacement kit, but I found one through a third-party seller on Amazon. I paid $15 for expedited delivery, and it was supposed to arrive yesterday—but I got a notice that it’s delayed until next Tuesday. One day earlier than the non-expedited delivery was scheduled. At the risk of sounding like a broken record…
@%^$!
We have a gas-powered push mower that I use for certain sections of the yard, like the steep slope out front and a few of the harder-to-reach areas in back. Non-self-propelled, sadly. I may have to break down and do the whole yard with it. A laborious task that’ll take hours, I’m sure, but if I let the grass go much longer, we’ll need to buy machetes and hack our way through a jungle just to reach the garden. That simply won’t do (and I doubt Menard’s sells them anyway).
On a positive note, we have a three-day weekend coming up, and I could not be more excited! Actually, it’ll be 3.5 days for me; in addition to our generous vacation package, CheeseGov gives us 36 hours of personal time to use as we see fit. It’s always tricky to figure out when to use that half-day, but tacking it onto an already-long holiday weekend seemed like a good plan to me.
I may end up spending that free time pushing a lawn mower across .8 acres’ worth of grass. But we also have kayaking and cocktails and smoked meat on the agenda, so there’ll be plenty o’ non-labor happening, too.
Three hours later…
UPDATE: So glad the parts kit arrived shortly after I spent my lunch hour mowing the front and side yards…
@%^$!
Are you doing anything fun this holiday weekend?
Mark My Words 
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