I am loathe to admit this but I am officially throwing in the rag on my "Get A Jump On Spring" gardening extravaganza weekend. It's too cold. We covered our winter beds last night before the dip in temperature, then we came in and scoffed and laughed at the weather forecast. My goodness, what alarmists! There was even a little snowflake icon on the weather bar. Ha ha and ha!
It's a good twelve hours later and don't I have egg on my face? First, there was sleet followed by snow followed by rain – all in about a twenty minute span but we got it all. I planned on cleaning my seed trays and maybe even planting marigold seeds. I have some creamy white ones that are really pretty. The only glitch was that I would have had to remove my gloves and get my hands wet. This, I could not do.
I thought I might till my future dream plot but again, no. I would not feel like such a wimp but Michael is outside weed whacking to his heart's content. He really could not wait to give that new zippity stick a spin around the block. It's last year's model but it's new to us and replaced the one we had which was the year before last year's model (and by that I mean it was 10 plus years old).
We also bought a new lawn mower which is divine, I tell you. Absolutely divine. I never thought I'd gush about a mower but it's a pleasure to have a machine that works for a change. It's not a guessing game whether or not it will start. We both gave that thing a major work out yesterday and I mowed until I ran out of gas.
Our new Husqvarna 6021P is a great mower for the price - we picked it up for $219. We were looking to stay at $200 or lower so we went a little over budget. It has a Kohler 149cc engine with overhead valves. I read that OHV mower engines are more efficient and provide more torque and hey, more torque's gotta be a good thing, right? Beats me, but that little smidgen of info got stuck in the ol' grey matter so I kept it in the pro column of my pro/con list while choosing the new beast. Supposedly they retain their ability to start easily as they age and that was a major plus in my book.
It has ball-bearing wheels so the pushing is easier, the rear wheels are BIG so you can rear up and land smack dab down on high weed clumps and it discharges cuttings into a rear bag OR you can have the mulch fly out the side. We prefer the fly out the side mulching method. Best of all, it's bright orange and we're all about color over here.
You can't always tell about a product after just one use so I'll be giving you an update later in Spring or Summer. It's not the PC, upscale, battery powered, silent electric mower but we're gonna beat the shit outta that thing and don't have $500 + dollars to spare. I hope we have it for years because it was surprisingly stressful trying to choose the right machine. We were tempted to just cruise through Home Depot and pick out whatever they had in stock. We took a tour and last week and weren't really too thrilled with what we found in our price range and price played a major role. I'm tired of being broke and I'm not sure what can be done about it but I think taking time before making large purchases is a step in the right direction. Let's see how many miles of mowing we can get out of that little Husky.
Mmmm....it still has that new lawn mower smell.
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