I broke my mower last year. I don’t want to go into details. Let’s just Mistakes Were Made. If I break it again this year, I promise that I’ll do something different and unique. (^_^)

Because occasionally I excel at procrastinating, I didn’t immediately order new parts. Not until this spring when it occurred to me that hey, I’m going to need to start mowing again.

Originally, the parts should have arrived on April 14th. The factory shipped them via UPS.

Then I get this email from UPS, saying “Shipping Exception Occurred.”

It appears that at some point, the box opened itself and everything fell out. They had an empty box on their hands and they weren’t about to deliver an empty box. They said that they would notify the seller about the issue.

I waited a few days before I contacted the seller.

Their telephony warned that they were having “longer than expected wait times.”

Took 70 (yes, seventy) minutes to get through to someone. However, the customer service person was delightful and took care of everything and I got my parts ordered and they were on their way again.

Then, I get another email from UPS, saying, “Shipping Exception Occurred.”

Well, crap.

Fortunately, this time, the box wasn’t empty. UPS was just letting me know that they were having problems on their end and that they would get me my box as soon as they could.

Fine.

Parts finally arrived yesterday. Blaze attached the blade and I was able to just go.

I chose to mow the parts of the yard that I see the most, so the yard between the main house and the tiny house, as well as the side yard of the tiny house.

OMG.

It makes such a difference. It now looks like someone lives here, that the houses aren’t abandoned. It was really nice to be able to clean everything up. So very satisfying.

There’s still a lot that needs to be mown. Septic field, upper meadow, back behind the orchard, etc. Will take me another four to five days to get it all done (if there isn’t so much rain!)

I bought a different blade than what we’d had, a more aggressive mulching blade. I’m really glad I did. The wet grass clogged it a bit, but then again, the wet grass would have clogged the regular mulching blade as well. But we have some tough grass (weeds) out here that I’d have to pass over twice in order for the regular blade to chop down.

Nope. One pass. Clean. So nice.

I feel as if my spring/summer has started finally. I get to start mowing again.

What activities signal the start of spring or summer for you?