The mowing-season begins

(Photo by BobbaLew.)

And so begins the mowing-season, a wild bucking-bronco ride of trying to keep up with our gigantic and prolific lawn.
Actually, it began last Tuesday, April 26, when I installed three sharpened cutting-blades on our 48-inch Country-Clipper Zero-Turn lawnmower.
The Country-Clipper is a fabulous machine.
It makes our lawn manageable.
It’s zero-turn, which means it can turn on a dime.
I mow one swipe, spin, and then the next swipe.
I’m not driving all over creation to mow my lawn.
Operating a zero-turn is a skill. But I got the hang of it without too much trouble.
With a zero-turn, I can mow my entire lawn in about four hours.
With a lawn-tractor it might take six-seven hours.
I mow four individual segments.
The front-lawn might take half an hour.
The north and south wings might take an hour or more each.
The backyard, the so-called “Back-40,” takes over two hours.
I had ordered an assist-jack to install the mower-blades.
What it does is lift the front of the mower, so the deck can be flipped out to work on it, e.g. install the cutting-blades.
The front of the mower could be lifted manually, but we’re old and it’s heavy.
The assist-jack didn’t appear.
I could jack it with my own jack (a car-jack). but there’s no place to lift.
I couldn’t wait; the front-lawn was growing like gangbusters.
So I installed the cutting blades the old way, down-and-dirty groveling on the garage-floor.
I ride the front up car-ramps, and install the blades from underneath.
I have a so-called “blade-buster” tool that clamps to the deck to keep the blades from spinning.
It holds them in position while torqueing, almost impossible from underneath with a loose two-by-four.
Cutting-blades installed, I could mow. So I immediately mowed the front-lawn.
If I had waited another day, it would have been almost impossible.
I finished just as a giant thunderstorm moved in.
I could not “blow it:” distribute the clippings all over the lawn.
A mower-man showed me this.
Raise the cutting-deck as high as it will go, 4&1/2 inches, and blast back-and-forth.
It blows the clumped clippings all over the yard, evenly distributed.
I mow at three inches.
And so begins the chase to keep up with our lawn, wedging in time between showers and 89 bazilyun medical appointments, and working out at the Canandaigua YMCA, grocery-trips, etc.
May is always the hardest month.
Some segments grow so fast I hafta mow every four days.
This chase will last all the way into October, maybe even November.
And right now I can’t mow the Back-40; it’s too wet.
I’m in no condition to unstick a 700-pound lawnmower.

RE: “We’re old.......” —Both my wife and I are 67.