In the summer of 2003 she purchased a lawn mower, the chassis was by Mountfields and the engine by Briggs & Stratton.
What with being ill and the rubbish that was going on in her life at that time, at the end of the summer of 2006 it was put away under a tarpaulin into Big Shed and, I regret to say, forgotten about.
Until this past month when she got into Big Shed and emptied it in order to drag out the rotten floor and renovated it with pallets for supports and thick slabs of marine plyboard for flooring.
And there, hidden away under a sun lounger and the tarp, was the lawn mower.
Not looking its' best, I must say. The paint's flaking in places, there are areas where it's a bit rusty, well, it looked very much like we would if we had gone through the life this poor machine has led for the past twelve years!
She dragged it out and put it in front of the Shack under a huge waterproof bag.
Yesterday, she spoke with Stuart, he is our opposite plot neighbor and asked him if he knew of a local company who would service it.
No, he didn't know of anyone but said that he would look at it for her.
He took the top of the oil tank and looked at the dipstick, there was a minute amount of oil in the tank, then he looked at the spark plug and gave that a good rub on his jeans, he took the top of the fuel tank and asked her for paper towel.
Luckily, the Shack runs as a fully equipped kitchen and she had two rolls of it, he pulled some off, twisted it and put it into the tank to take up as much petrol as he could.
Having poured in a good amount of engine oil, a litre or so of fresh petrol and replaced the spark plug, he asked her to hold the cut-out handle whilst he primed the engine and pulled the cord.
It coughed twice, belched blue smoke and started.
To be truthful neither Stuart nor she could believe what they were hearing.. but it was true.. it was the noise of a Briggs & Stratton engine purring away happily.. having not turned over for twelve years.
She is going to send them an email tomorrow to congratulate them on this extraordinary machine. Yes, she's a bit rusty and her flakey paint work isn't as pretty and shiny as when she was new but everything works and having adjusted the height, off she trundled cutting the grass as she went.
Wasn't that a happy thing! Especially as the weather is dry and she is absolutely on target for getting all the plots ready for winter.
She's trundled up and down the track with many, many barrow loads of both manure and wood chippings, so there is now a huge amount of well rotted manure on almost all of the beds, the tall raised beds will be topped up with a mix of both manure and wood chippings, which is also what she will put onto the strawberry beds.
She cut all the leaves down to a height of about 2" just after they produced the last flush of fruit in early August.
The garlic, onions, shallots will go in this week as well as flowering bulbs, she'll do a light prune on all the roses and cut back the vines who have raced each other up into cherry and plum trees.. silly grapes!
When she's finished planting and covering the beds, all she'll need to do is.. mow the grass.
Isn't that a happy tale.. and we had a very happy day today with a bbq. That will be in another post.
It's now bed time, she's having breakfast with Pat at Wetherspoons in Fulham at 10.30am tomorrow so chirps to you all.
GeeGee Parrot.
September 30th, 2018.
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