The Mower Slayer.....

[Evoken]

My darling wife, I love her and bless her heart, but boy is she hard on the equipment. Over the past 20 years I have been through more mowers than you can shake a stick at. You are saying to yourself well that's simple quite buying junk mowers. Well it's certainly not that simple, haha. She can turn a new mower into a smoldering pile of rubble in a matter of minutes. How does this happen you ask, I think only the lord knows. It is mostly bent blades, broken spindles, and snapped belts, but eventually they all succumb and there is no more fix left and not enough good metal to weld back together.

The cause of this of course is that she is not paying attention and treats every little riding mower like it is a brunch hog. I have tried time and time again to explain this to her and she just gets angry with me, you know the fella that has to fix it.

I of course love her to pieces and will keep patching up the poor things, but goodness gracious. The solution is to keep her off of the darned things, but against better judgement she always suckers me into letting her back on them.

Today's victim is a john deere f525 greens mower I bought from the neighbor boy. He is in the 4h small engine club and fixes them up and flips them. So I bought this thing a few months ago with all new belts and everything was great. She says let's tag team the grass and I want to try the new mower. Begrudgingly, I jump on the little rider and set her up with the new one. Me and the little man are cutting the front when I look over and see her using the push mower. I knew right away what happened, catastrophic failure..... all the nice new deck belt, one is snapped, one is stretched beyond serviceable use.

Oh well, I will fix it and it will be good until she tries to help again. She needs to keep to her push mower, she doesn't break them as they are cheap and easy to fix.

That's my rant for today, I love her and she IS trying to help, I think.

[pworley1]

I feel your pain.

[Thundarstick]

And that my friend is why no one but me ever gets to mow with my mower!

[Finster101]

I feel your pain.

I think a good many of us do. I can try and teach my wife to do something and I am criticizing her, especially with guns. We can be at the range with one of my buddies and I can quietly get him to mention something to her it's "okay, thanks I didn't realize I was doing that". Go figure.

[Evoken]

Agreed with the teaching. According to her I cannot do it. Even if I have taught a hundred or so apprentices to be good carpenters, apparently it's me. Haha, what can you do but laugh and keep fixing things.

[starnbar]

Hey 4-5 goats will solve all your problems and you get cheese and milk too.

[Evoken]

I've already got cows and pigs that keep most of the property trimmed up. The nice thing about mowers is they don't need to eat until you need them to work.

[Finster101]

I've already got cows and pigs that keep most of the property trimmed up. The nice thing about mowers is they don't need to eat until you need them to work.

You also don't have to watch where you walk so much.

[pmer]

Didn't happen without pictures LOL

[bedbugbilly]

That's why I like our lawn in Arizona . . . . all stones!

[RogerDat]

I count myself lucky she mows rather than just bugging me to, said bugging usually commences just as all materials and tools are set up to do some other project. So gentle about it too. Not hey the lawn looks bad go mow it. Not her style, she simply asks when am I going to mow it. That is a conversation that only ends when a satisfactory "when" is provided. Which must be specific to be acceptable. "this afternoon" means 1 minute past noon I better have a gas can in my hand or ear plugs.

Still for what it is worth she will mow the front. Except for the ditches and the steeper parts of the one hillside. Which means I better hustle as soon as she is done to finish lest the when am I going to finish goes on endless loop. Well I suppose shorter grass discourages mosquitoes.

The one thing I never understood is how is it that she can't see the grass she isn't cutting by taking corners in a high gear? Ridges and strips abound. I don't care, anyone driving past is going fast enough they won't notice a day after mowing if at all. Stopping here you're a friend so you won't say anything and me I'm not that fussy about the front, I drive through it to get to garage is about it. I use the back yard, not the front.

I will say I always check the oil after I'm done to insure it is not low if she takes it in her mind to use it. I also clear the engine of grass or debris. Doesn't use much oil but it's about 18 years old so uses a little and has a head noted for warping or blowing head gasket if it gets too hot. Which I know from experience she won't really notice until the RPM's are 2x normal from heat and the smoke starts to really bother her when it blows back. Busting belts is a new one, I was going to enquire how she does that then realized I don't want to know. Not knowing just seems like the smarter path.

Still it is swell she wants to help.

[DocSavage]

My wife is the same with electronics not the phone but chargers and cables. Bought some "indestructible " charging cables 6 months she's killed one already. Told her I was going to get her a job as a product tester.

[pmer]

Oops duplicate

[jimlj]

My wife won’t mow the grass unless I’m completely down. I’d consider myself lucky if I didn’t have to mow the lawn. A mower every once in a while is cheaper than hiring a lawn service.

[Three44s]

My wife got on top of a huge rock once. She bought a new spindle and new set of blades on the then nearly new mower and I changed out the damaged parts, she helped me and all is good as she bought her own large 70 hp Kubota field tractor and a used bush hog for it. The rougher ground gets the bush hog now and for the really rough stuff, we have a rear mount sickle mower.

Life is good!

Three44s

[granville_it]

"I feel your pain"

Mark

[granville_it]

"Hey 4-5 goats will solve all your problems"

There all good as "escape hatchers".

Mark

[buckwheatpaul]

Gentlemen....we are in dangerous waters.....be very careful!

[Evoken]

You are correct sir, which is why I posted this here instead of reading my darling the riot act.

Somehow they all just hate her, it's not really her fault. Which is why she is not to touch the big farm tractors and she knows it. They cost much more to repair than the belts and spindles (and blades).

[Sasquatch-1]

My question is, does your wife have any hobbies other then breaking your lawn equipment?

My wife loves to sew and has a couple of the high end sewing machines. Now if she was constantly breaking my equipment I would tell her I had some mending to do and was going to use one of her machines. That would end that.