Unsolved mowing conundrum

Last Friday, I mowed the front lawn and did the edges. That happened after many delays caused by lots of rainy weather over the past few weeks. I once again (still?) think it all underscores that it’s getting closer to the time for a change.

The rain delays let the “lawn” grow thick, and it was a lot of hard work to push through it, especially because I had to be careful to avoid stalling the mower—over and over again. By the time I was done, the mower battery was drained, and so was I (I also had to change the line trimmer’s battery, but I had backups; I only have one battery for the mower).

It was quite hard work physically, though arguably not as bad as before I started my daily walks. Even so, I think it’s time to give up mowing the front lawn and hire a service to take over. As I’ve said before, I’ve resisted because I need the exercise, and also because my battery-powered mower is recharged on solar power (so is my line trimmer). The mowing services all use petrol-powered machines.

One the one hand, switching from clean and green mowing to polluting fossil-fuel driven machines feels like defeat, like I’m abandoning my values—in fact that’s the main reason behind my stubbornness on this. On the other hand, I absolutely don’t enjoy mowing the front lawn, so why should I keep doing it?

For now, I’ll still do the back lawn for all the reasons I’ve mowed the lawn up to now. Also, the back is flat and the “lawn” is much less thick than out front, both of which make it much easier to do. I wouldn’t say I “love” mowing the back lawn, but I also don’t mind doing it.

The next day, in fact, I mowed the back lawn, which was even more overgrown (and it took less time to get that way). It isn’t unusual for the back lawn to grow faster than the front, but, even so, it’s easier to mow than the front is. However, Saturday was supposed to be rainy, so I skipped doing the edges along the fence up on the bank, along the side of the yard. I did manage to get the whole back lawn mowed—an area roughly twice as big as out front—without draining the battery.

There’s one more aspect to this adventure: I fixed a problem.

The last couple times I used the line trimmer, the line cut off on one side the bump head, meaning it stopped feeding line. This started happening after a few years of it working completely nomally—the line would completely run out, leaving the bump head empty. I thought I might have to replace the bump head (which isn’t inexepensive, but not horrible). However, I decided to take some [name brand] spray silcone lubricant into the holes the line feeds though. That seemed to work, and the line trimmer worked completely normally. If it starts breaking off again, I should be able to do this again.

Mowing out front was hard, the back less so, and I also managed to fix (at least temporarily…) my line trimmer. It was a variued adventure this time. Now, nearly a week later, I still think that it’s a question of when not if, I hire a service to take care of the front lawn, but I still have no idea when that will actually happen. I guess it many be a surprise to me, too.

The photo is of the tree on my street, the one I can see through the front window when I’m sitting in my chair. Not surprisingly, there were a few leaves I ground up while mowing. That, I’ll admit, was very satisfying.