Weeds and Woes

Times have been challenging of late here at the Armed Northern Florida Compound.

I accidentally poisoned Marvin and had to drive back and forth to a veterinary hospital in Gainesville several times. The zero-turn mower I thought was a bargain turned out to have a couple of problems that will require a lot of work. The temperature has approached or hit the hundred-degree mark nearly every day. And my wife is pushing to get the kitchen painted.

Marvin is fine. He gets stronger every day. What a relief. But the stress took its toll on yours truly. I went out to do outdoor work a couple of times during the last week, and I had to come back in. I felt weak. I was drained.

It made me think of my grandfather. My aunt died in May of 1994; the first of his children to go. My grandfather died in June, after losing his temper at a trashy tenant farmer and running after some cattle that got out. The night after the incident with the cattle, he had a heart attack, and he was gone after a few days. The cardiologist told me her belief was that the stress of losing my aunt caused a lesion of some sort to develop in a coronary artery, and the fracas with the tenant farmer caused it to come loose from the wall and block circulation.

Marvin is just a bird, but I really love him, and he has been with me since 1996. Over the years, I have had nightmares about bad things happening to my birds, and when Maynard died in 2021, one of the things that made it hard to bear was the fact that it was something I had dreaded–irrationally, I had thought–for a long time.

It was like having intrusive thoughts about a big shark behind you while swimming in your backyard pool, and then being bitten.

It’s possible to be hurt more by the death of a pet than the death of a person. It doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you. Different factors determine how any death affects you. I felt very bad when my mother died, but I knew it was coming, my mother was at peace with her fate, there was nothing I could do about it, she had accepted responsibility for all the cigarettes, I had a long time to get ready, and it was not my fault. It wasn’t as painful as Maynard’s death, which was sudden and preventable.

When Marvin started having seizures the other night, it was Maynard all over again, only worse, because I thought he might die in my hands, without even making it to the vet.

I have told my wife about my grandfather, and I told her to go easy on me for a while. I don’t want to push myself too hard too early.

Her prayer life is subpar these days, and it affects my welfare. The baby is an extremely powerful distraction. I am working with her to get her back up to speed. I know I am getting the short end of the stick at the moment, but this is actually normal for husbands. In a healthy, godly family, the husband and father is the one who makes the most sacrifices. Women love denying this and claiming the title of martyr, but men give more than women, unless they are substandard men.

It’s not something to resent. With authority comes added obligation. A marriage in which the woman has to do everything for the man, as though he were another child, is a sick marriage.

The mower has two anti-scalp wheels on the rear corners of the deck. They looked fine when I bought the mower, but I have learned they are stuck in place, and it is obvious the seller knew about it. They are held on two shafts that go down through little pieces of heavy pipe welded vertically to the deck. The ID of the pipe is about 1″. For some reason, Kubota practically made the clearance between the shafts and the pipes an interference fit. Then it made the shafts and pipes from steel, guaranteeing galling in wet or even humid weather. This was very bad engineering. In order to prevent galling with a fit like this, you really have to take the shafts out occasionally and put anti-seize or something on them.

An interference fit is what you have when you have to shove something in order to get it to go into something else. It means the OD of the inner thing is actually bigger than the ID of the outer thing.

Kubota didn’t even put grease fittings on these pipes. The wheels aren’t supposed to turn right or left, so I guess Kubota saw no need to call for grease. It might have prevented the galling.

The shafts have to move up and down in the pipes for adjustment purposes, but they are essentially welded in place. I tried a three-foot pipe wrench, penetrating oil, an air hammer, and a plain old big hammer, and nothing has moved the shafts at all.

I started drilling one of the shafts out. I ended up frying a nice Makita cordless drill after I got to what I believe is a 7/8″ bit. I now have a crude pipe I made myself, inside the deck pipe. I would guess I put 6 hours of work in, in the ruthless sun, bent over most of the time. Not smart.

I can now get a die grinder burr and a sawzall blade in there, so when I feel better, I plan to use both to weaken the remaining shell of the shaft until I can grab it with pliers, bend it, and pull it out.

Then I have to work on the other side.

I also broke one of the mower’s plastic fenders.

The mower came with a fuel problem. When I ran it on the left tank, it choked periodically. To fix this, I had to take the tank off and clean it out. The tank sits under a fender, and the fender is a bear to take off. I found I could loosen the fender and wiggle the tank out, but as I was doing this, the fender split.

I was wiggling it gently, but it looks like the sun had made the fender extremely brittle. The $200 fender, that is.

Now I have two new fenders coming. I could have glued the old fender together, but it would have looked awful, and the plastic would still be brittle. I should have everything put in order in about 10 days. Until then, I have to decide whether to run the mower with one fender and a bunch of stuff missing or fall back on the John Deere.

I have a flail mower on the way. I bit the bullet and bought one. I was concerned about the China tariff deal, not to mention inflation. Every time I have put off a big buy like this, the price has gone up before I gave in.

I need to be able to deal with my weeds, and the bush hog is not the right tool. It’s huge, it’s extremely dangerous, it cuts very crudely, and I just plain don’t like it. A flail mower should cut anything up to 1.5″ woody stems, and it should do it safely, leaving pretty fine clippings, closer to the ground than a bush hog.

The mower I got is a ditch mower. That means I can use hydraulics to extend it to the right of my tractor, and I can also tilt it up 90° for hedges or down quite a bit for ditches. The main thing I like about tilting it up is that it will give me access to the underside so I can work on it without lying on my back or something.

I keep thinking about buying a John Deere 4520 or 4720 tractor from the pre-emissions days. These are supposed to be very good machines, and they have considerably more grunt than my Kubota without being much larger. Maybe next year. Or maybe this year if inflation keeps hammering us.

Used tractor prices have plummeted because no one cares about the pandemic any more. People are going to work and making things and selling them, so getting a new tractor is easy, and that makes used ones less desirable.

I detest John Deere because of the way it treats customers, but I don’t have a lot of options unless I want a Buck Rogers post-emissions tractor. Which I don’t. JD should keep making parts for the 4520 and 4720 for at least another 15 years.

In around a week, I should have my flail mower, and by the end of the ensuing week, my zero-turn should be back together. Then I’ll have a couple of months of mowing before the grass and weeds go dormant, and then I can rest, during the months when the weather is cool and working on a lawnmower would actually be bearable.