Big plans

I had the best intentions when I rolled my lawnmower out of the shed Saturday afternoon. Really, I did.

I had spent the morning at the Northwoods Premiere Beef Show. It is always impressive to see the amount of work the young people and their families do to get their animals ready to enter the show ring.

The steak and egg breakfast cooked up by the volunteers with the Taylor County Farm Bureau was delicious as was the grilled ribeye sandwich members of the Taylor County Fair Board cooked up for lunch.

My plan was to spend time on Saturday afternoon doing some yard chores. As plans go it was a good one. We have a small wooden deck off of the front of my house that has shrubs in front of it. My landscaping goal this summer is to rip out those somewhat straggly bushes and deck and put in its place a larger decomposed granite patio area where I can have my grill and put my equipment for beer brewing without looking like I am channeling Walter White from Breaking Bad — something I am sure my neighbors would appreciate.

For now, the pressing project was to mow my grass for the first time this year. In general I try to follow the “No Mow May” movement to the flora and fauna of my yard to wake up with the spring before ruthlessly shredding it with my lawnmower blade. As a more practical consideration, I try to hold off the first mowing of the season to give my yard time to dry out after the winter thaw and spring rains.

With a cold, wet spring I haven’t had to worry too much about my yard becoming an overgrown jungle before I got a chance to mow it. But with the recent spell of summer-like weather my grass went from brown to green seemingly overnight. By last weekend, the front yard was looking decidedly scraggly. With the blooms on the apple trees and on the trilliums, marsh marigolds and other wildflowers in the woods across from my home, I didn’t feel much guilt in destroying the dandelions that were starting to pepper my yard with their friendly yellow bouquets.

Like I said, I had the best of intentions when I rolled out my lawnmower. Things looked bright when it started up on the first pull. I was making great progress on the front yard working my way from the street to the house. I had about a 10 foot patch left to go when my mower began to sputter and then stop.

In hindsight, what I should have done is grabbed the new, empty gas can and run over to the gas station to fill it up with high-octane ethanol-free gas.

What I did, was grab the can that had been sitting next to my shed and put its contents in my mower, with the hope of being about to finish up the last bit of my yard and enjoy a cold beverage.

It was only after attempting unsuccessfully to restart my mower that I noticed a crack in the top of the plastic gas can and the realization sinking realization that I would not be finishing the lawn that day.

A quick internet search will explain all the bad things there are about getting water in your lawnmower’s gas tank. And while the 20 minute YouTube video promised to show me how to “easily” fix it by disassembling half the mower, I knew better than to trust my decidedly mediocre mechanical skills.

A phone call and some help from my son to load it onto the back of my wife’s SUV, saw me dropping it off to Fourmans to clean it up and do a spring tune-up while it is there.

As I pass by the patch of uncut lawn each morning as I wait for my lawnmower to be fixed, I am reminded on the old saying that haste makes waste.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.