An Ode to Our First Mower

Deere John,
You are worthless to me.  All you do is sit around and refuse to do your job.  I'm tired of catering to your many complaints.  You dared to show up at my door with rusty blades, a headlight burnt out, your wash port cap missing, and the most aggravating thing of all...YOU WON'T START!!!  We've contacted Lowe's (where we bought you) and demanded a new mower.  They at first tried to convince me that they could change you, make you better.  But I didn't believe them.  I no longer trust you.  As soon as they "fixed" you, you'd probably come up with a different complaint.  Well, so long first mower!  I've found someone new.  Someone who actually pulls his weight around here and doesn't complain.  Consider yourself replaced!
Good bye and good riddance,
Amanda

Lol.  That was fun.  So, as you've probably guessed, we have a new-new mower.  New mower; take 2.  New Mower the sequel.  Whatever you want to call it.  Lowe's came last Saturday morning and hauled away the useless mower and delivered us another.  

As you can see from the picture below, Jim was apprehensive about starting the second mower.

But it started right up!

Just the previous afternoon, Friday, one of our neighbors offered to mow our front yard for us.  We accepted because we had not heard from Lowe's like we were supposed to on Friday.  Jim had called earlier in the week to demand the new mower and they said that they had our model in stock; however, the John Deere guy needed to come assemble them.  They told us that they would give us a call by Friday to give us an update.  Well, they never called by Friday evening, so we called them.  Good thing too because they hadn't reserved one of them for us like they said they would.  We were not pleased.  We were able to arrange for them to deliver the new mower the next day.  We sent a thank you card to our wonderful neighbor.

Here is how bad our grass was.  If you can't read the ruler, the one on the right is taller than 10 in, the ruler on the left is 8.5 in.  That is some tall grass.  If you click on the pic, you can see a slightly larger image.

Along with using the mower for the first time, Jim also tried out our new trimmer that Dad had bought us as a house warming gift.  It worked great.  Jim's pants were green from the knees down afterwards.  ^_^

In other news, my lilacs are in full bloom now.  Purple lilacs are one of my most favorite flowers and I now have 4 bushes of them growing in the yard.  I love it!

Lilacs and Azaleas

Funny.  Last summer in my creative writing class, I had to write a poem about azaleas.  I had to google them then because I didn't really know what they were...and now I have some.  They are much brighter in real life than what this photo shows.  The opening line for my poem was:

"The regalia of the dahlia does not compare

To the salient, deviant, astounding azalea."

lol.  That was my least favorite poem I had to write that summer.

Runs like a Deere...shot in the head

Ok, so Jim and I have recently purchased a new John Deere riding lawn tractor.  We were originally going to buy a Troybilt Bronco, but just before heading to the store, I checked reviews online and they were horrible for that model.  We ended up paying the extra money for a quality John Deere...or so we thought.  The first problem was that our brand new mower arrived with rusty blades as you've seen from Jim's post.  We managed to get the rusty blades off and exchange them (no charge) for new ones.  The weather was pretty rainy since then, so our mower sat in the garage waiting for a sunny day.  That day finally came, and we were eager to get started on mowing our lawn.  Unfortunately, the darn thing wouldn't start!  We thought it might be the battery, so we went to have it checked, but it was fine.  Jim's Dad was over on Monday, and the 2 of them tinkered with it in the garage.  They managed to get it to start, but it was after 8pm, too late to mow.  When Jim got home from work, we tried to start it up again, but it wouldn't start.  I went outside to call Jim to dinner, and noticed that one of the headlights was burnt out as well.  Well, we had had enough!  This was a brand new mower (a John Deere at that), and we shouldn't be having all these problems.  We called up Lowe's and demanded a new mower.  They first tried to convince us we should just bring it in for service, but we stuck to our guns and insisted on a swap.  They finally agreed.  They have our model in stock, but none of them are assembled yet.  The certified John Deere guy is supposedly supposed to come in this week to assemble them.  Lowe's will give us a call when he comes, and we can make the switch at that time.  In the meantime, our lawn keeps growing.  I'll make apology cards to our neighbors either tonight or tomorrow and explain the situation so they don't think we are just ignoring our lawn and call the city on us or something.  

Here is a pic of Jim reattaching the new-new blades.

In other news, I've been fighting a losing battle against the squirrels.  I've been trying to prevent them from eating the birdseed from the feeder.  I don't mind if they eat the fallen seed on the ground, but these squirrels are little piggies and can eat a full feeder in just one day.  They also prevent the birds from eating at the feeder.  Well, so far the score is Squirrels-3/Amanda-0.  They do make for great guest entertainment as I found out from Kristi's bridal shower that I hosted.  There is also one squirrel in-particular that I have a soft spot for.  He seems to be a hybrid black squirrel.  We've named him/her Shadow.  (I know original, right?)  Anyways, I've taken a few pics of Shadow for you guys to see.  He seems to be smarter than the other squirrels.

Shadow the semi-black squirrel

  

I think he was posing for the camera.

And last but not least, I wanted to post some pics of the lovely farm across the street from us.  The pictures don't really do it justice though.  I also tried to zoom in on their 3 horses.

Oh Deere

Recently we ordered a lawn mower to cope with all our green grass. We spent some time researching and reviewing our options before deciding on a John Deere LA115 lawn tractor. While it is a more expensive option, it is a quality machine that should be able to do anything we ask of it. I am excited to spend a few hours on a pleasant day with our new tool. Although, I have lost my best excuse to dodge my lawn care responsibilities.
We were excited when our new tractor was delivered earlier this week. Although, after some inspection we discovered that both 'new' blades were heavily corroded. Yesterday we spent some time on the phone, mostly with customer service robots, then talked with a helpful clerk. He advised us to remove the blades and bring them back to the store for an exchange. It took about 45 minutes and several choice swear words to loosen the rotor nuts with my short crescent wrench.  We had no troubles at the store, and we picked up a long ratcheting combination wrench for reassembly. Once the new new blades are attached we will be able to move on to the next unexpected complication. Regardless, I'm looking forward to wearing a green cap with a yellow stag emblem.