SHEESH!

Friday - the day I can do whatever I like. I woke up with my back feeling a bit sore, the result of yesterday's exertions weeding the garden, particularly the steep front part. Acting like a 20 year old didn't help either what with clambering up and over the sides of the trailer to stamp down the rubbish; doing the same with the large rubbish bins at the recycling centre; manoeuvring the fully laden trailer by hand to position it close to the bins (a bit narrow to back with the car and I only had one eye to use) and unloading what seemed like tonnes of vegetation. After breakfast (poached egg on toasted home-made bread) and a voltaren tablet  I felt a bit better so decided to do the lawns.

We only have two small lawns, one an elevated one at the back of the house and the other at the front of the house below the deck and in front of the native bush section that slopes steeply to the road. I'm used to much larger lawns so I never bought a power lawn mower for this place, leaving the good old Masport at the rental property. Last Christmas I bought a small hand-mower at Bunnings and, after using it once and realising that it was crap I returned it for a refund. I then stupidly went to a lawnmower shop and instead of buying a motormower I bought another handmower. This was a bit more robust than the Bunnings pile of crap but after several uses now it has beeen relegated to the back of the shed. The lawns were about knee high (result of rain, heat and laziness) so the handmower wouldn't have a hope in hell of getting through it so out came the weed-eater or line-trimmer depending on which hemisphere you come from. I bought this many years ago and it has given me reasonable service even though bits have fallen off over the years. Gone now are the safety guard, the 'bump' mechanism and the the control handle which makes it a dangerous and frustrating piece of equipment to use - but hey - the motor still goes well. Because the 'bump' has gone (the spring flew off into the bushes ages ago) and it was a particularly useless mechanism anyway, the line runs out about every two minutes. This necessitates pulling the line feeder apart, threading new line, reassembling and starting the motor up again (at least I turn it off each time).

Frustrating. I got both lawns done eventually which took a couple of hours managing to avoid slashing any vital bits of my anatomy and only scarring my Redband gumboots (a topic for another post soon) and vowed to get rid of the old line-trimmer and buy another one. I looked them up on the internet and would you believe it, most of the brands are still the same technology as my current one I bought 15 years ago. They still have the stupid 'bump' feeding device. Idiotic. Doing some further research I discovered something called the Little Juey which has an amazingly simple to use and apparently effective line feeding mechanism which takes seconds to replace a line. Brilliant I thought. The only trouble is that the Little Juey is an electric line-trimmer. I want a petrol one. I discovered however that Little Juey sell the line feeding mechanism (about $80) that can be fitted to other brands. This means that I may have to buy a new petrol line-trimmer, also buy a Little Juey mechanism, dismantle the new machine, throw away the fitted 'bump' mechanism and fit the Little Juey one. Well. How stupid is that. Why can't these companies work out a way of getting together. Sheesh!