[Today’s run: 3.2 miles Watson Road]
We had about 2 inches of rain over the weekend and it has cramped my lawn mowing schedule. I got some done on Sunday and a bit more done today. I should be able to finish up tomorrow evening.
Our lot actually goes in front of our neighbor’s house, between her house and the road. She had recently lost her brother (he died while we were living in Dubuque). He had been mowing everything over there including the bit that is ours. This spring one of her other brothers came over and knocked on the door and asked if we would be willing to mow more. So we are doing that.
Our mower is a John Deere Z425, a mid-size residential zero-turn machine. We’ve had it since we first moved here in 2009, so it must be about 13 years old. I think it has 600+ hours on the meter now. I’ve had some trouble with it over the years, mostly the carburetor getting gummed up. I replaced that once a few years ago and again this spring. Now it also has a problem with the choke cable. It starts just fine with a little blast of ether and will run and restart while it is warm. I’ll have to do something about that choke. Otherwise it is doing OK and I am definitely better off to spend a hundred or two on it than to dive in for another $5k for a replacement.
Speaking of our weird lot shape, we actually have a wedge shaped lot and the western tip is a post that is on the other side of the road. So we own just a little triangle of land on the far side of the road. Our lot does not have a lot of depth from the road. But the neighbor behind us has said we can mow a bit into his property to give us a bigger backyard and keep the snakes and bugs away from the house more effectively.
Here’s a picture from google maps. Our house is the wedgy lot near the road. The neighbor’s house is set back from the road and her driveway goes through our lot and a bit of another property which, I honestly don’t know who owns that, some out-of-state relative of that clan I think. (I could get on the county GIS system and get that person’s info, but I’m not going to right now.) I believe that person or someone preceding that person, owned a bigger chunk and then they took bites out of it for different people and the bites don’t line up so as to cover all of the original chunk.
Property lines in Mississippi can be really strange.
Anyway, we are mowing all of ours and a bit more. And that is fine as long as they don’t mind how I do it or how often. So far I think we are getting along ok.
Oh, one other note about Google Maps. They don’t spell our street name the same way the county does. The sign at the end of our street spells it Mt Ariery Church Rd. I’ve sent a correction to Google Maps but I’ve never heard anything back.