Done it!

It’s raining gently as I type this but so far we seem to have avoided the thunderstorms that were forecast. My main goal when I got up this morning was to get the rest of the grass on my land cut before the rain arrived and to be honest, given the amount that I still had to do, I was pessimistic that I’d be able to do so.

Nevertheless, although I was getting tired after the effort of the past few days and had some aching muscles, I set to with a will to do my best and my old ‘débroussailleuse’ decided that it would also do its best to help me out.

It started pretty easily and was soon chomping its way through the grass on either side of my land where I drive in and out and the grass was brushing the underside of my car. But the signs were not good because when I stopped to refuel the machine and add more nylon line to its cutting head, when I went to restart it had locked solid just as it did before.

I thought I’d remove the starter pull mechanism to see if I could see anything obvious that was preventing it turning but there wasn’t, except when I went to turn the crankcase nut with my fingers, it did so easily again. Look, I know I’m on borrowed time with this machine and I have a new one on the way anyway, so there’s no point wondering about the why’s and wherefores, so I seized the opportunity, got it running again and went back to work.

But it wasn’t to last because the next time I stopped to refuel and add more nylon line, it did exactly the same thing again, and this time I couldn’t get it to turn. So that left me with two alternatives – either I could leave things and wait until my new machine arrives next week or I could get my ride-on mower out and see what I could do with that. I chose the latter.

It was tough work. The grass is very thick at its base and I had to go very slowly, start off with a very high cut and gradually keep trying to lower it with each pass. Even so, with the amount of grass going through the cutters the cutting belt keep screaming and smoking which was just what I was trying to avoid. But succeed I did even though it took a couple of hours or so to do what was left in the centre of the land. And by keep going back and attacking the very long, heavy stalks until they’d gone, it didn’t even end up looking too bad.

So that was a big relief. After the amount of work that I’ve done over the past few days I think I might take tomorrow off. Monday is another bank holiday here so I think I’ll use it to fit my new porch light and then give the car a good clean. Take my word for it, it needs it – inside and out 😐