The Cookie Jar
January 4th, 2008
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Unexpected delay
January 4th, 2008
On the 28th of December 2007 I got it into my head early one morning to mow the yard before the new year officially hit. It was a brilliant plan.
1) - take before pictures of yard.
2) - step outside and take pictures
3) - replace step 1. with step 4. then proceed to step 5.
4) - get dressed
5) - do step 2. then proceed to step 6.
6) - mow yard
Easy. As most brilliant plans are.
I took a couple shots of the back yard which is too brown and dead to put on an uplifting happy site like this and I took some pictures of the front yard. Green winter grass springs eternal.
That strip of dead brown in the lower left corner of the image is Zoyza growing like only bought by mail zorya can. Isn’t it beautiful? (see the process below on how you too can get a yard like this. 8^)
So I pull the string trimmer mower out of the barn (see lower right image below) and fire it up. (I nearly broke it a couple weeks ago. I couldn’t tell if it needed oil in the engine or not (the stick is crystal clear and there is oil covering the entire stick so I figured it was fine, but since I hadn’t put any oil in it in 1 maybe 2 years I figured it definitely would need some soon. But the stick was covered in oil I tell you, so I didn’t put any in.) and when it stopped working suddenly with a lurch, as I was going into a thick brush and white clouds of burnt oil smoke came from the sides I figured it was telling me it needed oil. I checked the stick. It was dry. Finally! So I put oil in it until the stick said stop. It never did. I put an entire quart in the engine. The stick didn’t say when I tell you, it was the stick’s fault.)
So when I fire it up on that cold December morning and white pillowy smoke starts coming out the side and it’s jerking from side to side like a $25 dollar a hour mattress I figure it’s getting the gunk out. That’s cool. Work that gunk out. Yeah. Work it.
Then it stops. No gas. Ah, ok.
So I drive ten minutes to the store, get gas, come back and fill the tank of the string trimmer. It’s a 6 hp string trimmer by the way and of the push variety. You put twenty inch long strings folded in half on the rotary and use them as blades. It’s a better machine than a regular lawn mower because when you wrap buried barb wire around the shaft it bounces back much easier, and when you hit a stump three inches off the ground hidden in tall grass your machines doesn’t go flying out of your hands. It’s for taming the lawn before you can starting working with it. 8^)
Gas tank full, stick still says full, start the engine. Nope. Start the engine. Nope. Won’t start. I didn’t want to have to do this.
I get the instruction manual and read it. Hmm… 20 ounces of oil max. 1 quart > 20 oz. Damm. I think I fucked up.
I drain the oil. I clean the chrome. I polish the fire engine red paint and gently talk to it reading Emily, and Whitman poetry as I try to get it back to working order. This takes thirty minutes.
It broke.
A week later I get it back from the lawn maintanance people a friend of mine knows.
“Yer git oil everywhur. Why it dint start. Carborator git oil in it. Filter soaked wit oil.”
“Ok. So it can be fixed though right?”
“Sures. Git me aday.”
3 arces of land you can call your own (after 30 years) = $12.5k
6 hp gas string trimmer from Lowes = $450 dollars.
Learning that less is more when it comes to oil = $52.68
And here is the process on how to prepare land for growing grass.
