Fuck what the calendar says, spring isn’t really here until I have to mow the lawn… and that day was yesterday. Our lawn mower’s pretty beat up – my brother in law managed to hit a piece of metal pipe with it, couldn’t get it running right again, so did what any responsible teenager would do: He shoved it in the garage, called it “winter” and reasoned to tell me about it next spring.
I dug it out of the shed, put some fresh gas in it and got it running… sort of. The governor’s off quite a bit and it shakes like crazy. I’m going to try and track down a cheap place to buy a new blade for it rather than trying to balance the old one back out, and then once it stops shakin’ I’ll see if I can fix the governor to get it to run at a reasonable, stable speed.
It did the job though – I tampered with the governor spring a little to bring the revs back down to a sane level which stopped most of the shakes. It was good enough to mow the entire half-acre, though some portions were extra thick and still a little moist so it was tough going, and I had to take the recycler off for those parts.
Another year’s probably going to pass where we don’t get to build our deck – I’ve planned the thing out about four or five times now, and something always seems to come up in the way. Summer in our back yard is fantastic – sitting in the shade with a laptop and that almost-ever-present mid-western wind blowing in is much better than being cooped up upstairs in front of a desktop.
So I’m thinking a reasonable sized deck to cover the nasty area behind the laundry, with an awning, some outdoor rugs and some patio furniture would be a fantastic way to work all summer. Alas, it’s probably not to be – I’ll be stuck in this nasty old patio chair under a leaning tree with the laptop sitting on my lap and the bugs jumping out of the grass onto my feet. In fact as soon as the rain goes away I might go spread some bug killer powder out to stop that last bit.