OH MY GOD I FINALLY GOT THE LAWNMOWER STARTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Many congratulations on this accomplishment!

i'll bet you forgot to prime it on the first attempt.

please waft the cuttings over in my direction... there's no more summery smell, but i am locked up on deadline hell, far away from freshly mown grass...

http://www.desertratdemocrat.com/archives/champagne.jpg

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e391/marthasminions/mower52.jpg

Witness the magic! I did prime it. I think a little moisture may have gotten into the gas can. It's been stored in the basement, but the basement, to put it mildly, is damp.

Congratulations!

YAY! But what's with that mowing pattern?

You should replace that lawnmower with an Assyrian battle chariot equipped with scythes on the hubs of its wheels. More fun and much easier to start. You could drive it wearing a fake beard and one of those ziggurat-looking hats.

Hoohah wootiue doo hooray! Jesus Christ, I hate lawnmowers, esp. the electric ones because I always run over the cord. It makes me grateful that all 25 square feet of my 'yard' are covered in crushed up pecan shells. (A ground covering, not a consequence of me being some crazy drunken porch-sitting, pecan-shelling litterer.)

You have a very pretty yard, Beth!

Thank you! The crazy mowing pattern was because I was avoiding the daffodil clump. I ended up massacreing it, for the sake of a clean line, goddammit.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b361/tapestore/daffy.jpg

i recall every lawnmower we ever had or borrowed to be a pain in the ass, except for the manual/push mowers. congrats beth :)

i want a yard!

Oh god, the push mowers are a total pain too, the way the tiniest stick will jam the blades.

At one of my gardening jobs there is a mower that I've replaced the motor (engine?) on two times in a row, because my son twice hit a stump and bent the crankshaft. $200 each time, out of my pocket. Now the mower just has a hard disk where the primer button used to be. Is this a no-primer newfangled thing?
The mower is balky as all get-out, even though it was wintered in a heated basement and has new gas in it. So it's at the shop again. At least I can put the yearly maintenance on the bill. I didn't think it would need it this year, on account of the BRAND NEW MOTOR.

Does anyone know about the no-primer thing? My son took it in to the shop, and I don't think he remembered to ask them.

I told him, when he hit the stump for the second time, "If I didn't love you you would be SO FIRED."

It's a stealth-stump—very low-down in the grass, only a problem because the mower blades are set even lower, for the putting-green (hah!) look. I should take an axe to the fucking thing. The stump AND the mower.

...and the son!

Me too! Well, my husband. We got a cheap ass one (about 50 euros!)

congratulations!

wait, are you the guy who lives behind me who kept pulling the cord to his lawnmower and screaming "FUCK!" "SHIT!" "FUCKING SHIT!" between every non-starting pull? FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF?

Yes, Beth is that guy.

(?)

I am that guy.

I used a highly aggravating push mower today, at a job. Have to, because the yard has a series of small lawns on various levels. You have to carry the mower up and down steps. In addition to the maddening twig-jams, there is the problem of wiry-stemmed seedheads popping back up after you pass over them. There are areas that have proper lawn grass, and they mow fine, but then there are areas with clumpy wiry sheep fescue or some such shit. It's too much area for a strong-trimmer. Argh.

I wish they made really small gas mowers. Hmm. Maybe they do.

STRING-trimmer.

They should make a lawn roomba.

Ohhh my parents have like two acres of mowed lawn, so my dad bought a practically antique Cub Cadet and kept it running for YEARS, maybe decades. Of course he delegated its operation to us as soon as we were old enough to reach the steering wheel and the pedals at the same time. Not to mention the Gravely HEAVY-DUTY brush-clearer & snowblower, which only he was allowed to operate. Oh yes, we are rich in machinery.

Riding mowers are the only way, I'm convinced. They also pull trailers for leaf & branch collection, and if you're totally insane (ie my dad) you can jury-rig a sort of leaf blower with some heater duct that dumps the shredded leaves into the trailer behind you.

The killing blow is, and don't ask me where it came from, but we also had (have?) one of those giant rollers with a seat, which I assume you pull behind a tractor (or a horse, given how old that thing was) to smooth things out. These days we have a giant garage, too.

RIP daffs

http://www.motorbooks.com/Store/UserDirs/motorbooks.com/coverimages/139377.jpg

I CAN HAS FACE OF VERY PWN

The Beast

http://www.oldengine.org/members/murphy/HPIM0799a.jpg

I'm sorry, Beth!! I'm so pleased for your lawnmower prowess, it's just that all mention of lawn upkeep & gardening remind me of home! Miss.

Oh my god! The beast is terrifying!

Laurel, maybe you could get a job on the crew at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden (where I've never been). This is from the "Employment Opportunities" section of their website:

"May be assigned to operate large power gardening equipment, such as a tractor, mower, rototiller, roller, sprayer, etc."

Haha. I actually live about a five-minute walk from the Bklyn Botanical Garden and I've never been to it either.

Yay for my handy brother-in-law who took our mower apart and put it back together so it works now! It was stopping as soon as it started. Yay for handy people in general! And people who invent computers and ibuprofen and stuff!

honestly this is my least favourite sound in the world. I HATE LAWNMOWERS SO MUCH. there's one going outside my window right now and it's like it's right in my ear. i can't hear the music from my speakers which are right there, i can't hear myself think, i am having to restrain myself from throwing shit out of the window at it AAARGHHHH FUCK OFF PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.

Count yourself lucky you're not a football fan:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/Vuvuzela_red.jpg/800px-Vuvuzela_red.jpg

Dude's gotta mow a lawn.

don't care what he's gotta do, it's intolerable

Lawnmowers bad, strimmers worse, industrial leafblowers even worserer.

I had this same epiphany a few weeks ago when after trying all kinds of different ways to prime the fucker, I finally realized it was just really low on gas.

Can't bother getting worked up over this unless someone's doing it at 6:00am. There's someone rockin a leaf blower or something outside my building at like 4:00 every morning, which is about the time I've been laying awake for two hours and am finally falling asleep. Seldom fails.

Someone's got a car alarm that goes off all the time too, but there's another thread about that.

Unless the neighbors are mowing at an ungodly hour, i.e. before 9 am, STFU.

seriously, if you're complaining about lawn mowing that's happening during the day, quit being a big sensitive overprivileged baby. "intolerable," pfffft.

An hour or two of power tool noise per week > Neighbor whose overgrown lawn is home to rats, raccoons, and other vermin.

lawnmowers are terrible, and the hank hill types who gotta mow every week at 7 am are the worst. mow your damn lawn in the evening.