What have you learned?

[CHEESE2009]

What have you learned while maintaining your lawns so far?

1. Trimming along the side of a pool & jumping over it's corners due to junk lying around is a bad idea, you might fall in.

2. If your on the role while trimming a hill, & the customer comes out to watch, your chances of not scalping the hill decrease.

3. If you don't mow over dog poop, don't even try to whippersnip around it, or you will get a tan too dark for your own good.

4. Don't mow over Styrofoam or news paper, your mower knows it's not grass & will reject it all over the lawn in the shape of a middle finger.

5. Don't trim a hedge if you haven't checked it for birds nests, the mother of the birds will come out & smash into your head & steal your hat.

6. Everything including pavement & your trucks gas pedal is slippery once wet.

7. The wind has a split personality, it will cool you down, but make it so you are unable to blow the debris where you want. It wants you to really work hard during the fall.

8. Cleaning the inside of the discharge door on your mower while it's on scares people, but makes you seem brave.

9. When one thing goes wrong during the day, everything will eventually get worse.

10. Customers who like your price, still wont pay you on time.

[Steve]

Those are great! I have a feeling you could have gone to at least 20!

[musician/lawnman]

11. When the customer wants you to line trim down the weeds growing up through the rocks in a flower bed near a sliding glass door... the answer is NO.

12. If you finish the 1st few passes on the lawn & it just doesn't look right... You've probably forgotten to drop the deck on your ZTR down from the locked (up) position.

13. When training a new employee how to run a ZTR for the 1st time don't underestimate how bad he is going to suck at it. Put him in the middle of a HUGE field where there is NOTHING to hit.

14. It's cheaper to spend the .42 cent stamp & send them the invoice than to knock at the door for payment & have to waste 5 minutes every week talking about how hot it is. Mow the lawn & get the hell outta there.

15. "Maybe I won't get stuck in there" is always a bad philosiphy.

16. Check palm trees for squirrel nests prior to trimming, it's no fun to clean up half a baby squirrel.

17. potholes are the arch enemy of trailer axles.

18. Bees, wasps, spiders, & fire ants all suck.

19. When you get to that time of year & need to cut the lawns 1/4 of an inch lower than normal to keep them from getting insane.... you can no longer clear that tree stump.

20. If you get done mowing an overgrown lawn & need to change the blades before going on to do your next lawn... the spindle bolts are going to be damn hot.

[kdexpd]

Absolutely freakin' hillarious!!
Thanks for the laugh, I needed it after today's heat! However, I'm still half dilerious from the sun, so I probably won't even remember this in the morning.
LOL!

[musician/lawnman]

Yeah it was another hot one today though we got rained on twice. It was actually nice to get soakig wet & then be cold in the a/c in the truck.

[swstout]

Absolutely freakin' hillarious!!
Thanks for the laugh, I needed it after today's heat! However, I'm still half dilerious from the sun, so I probably won't even remember this in the morning.
LOL!

In the last 8 days we have had 7 over 100. Day before yesterday it only got up to 98. We were supposed to have 80's today with 60% reain. 102 and not a drop.

Steve

[kdexpd]

I hear ya Steve! Here in northeast MO our temps have been in the mid to upper 90's but with 50% and above humidity. Makes the heat index up above 100 degrees. The rain hasn't helped out anything either. It seems like once the ground gets just dry enough, it rains again. I'm so tired of the heat that I went to Auto Zone tonight and bought some fog lights to use as headlights on my Exmark. I mowed one of my commercial accounts tonight and it was sooooo much nicer!! Not to mention it was actually a lot of fun too. I was out till 11:30, but the temps were just right..about 75 degrees. I plan to start mowing my large commercial accounts late in the evening as long as the temps remain high. I figure if I mow my residentials early in the week and get them caught up, I can start sleeping in later towards the end of the week and mow during the evenings and into the nights. The only draw back is that the grass gets wet with dew after dark, so it makes things pretty interesting on slopes....HAHA! I'll have to post some pics if I can figure out how to set my camera to take pictures after dusk.
Later!
Kendrick

[CHEESE2009]

LOL @ 15. "Maybe I won't get stuck in there" is always a bad philosiphy.


21. Diarrhea is really the only excusable reason to take the day off from maintaining lawns.

22. Emptying the grass from your mower bag is more work then mowing, trimming, & blowing.

23. If you finished cutting a lawn & look back at it once, it looks great. If you look back a second time, you'll find a problem & have to start your trimmer up again.

24. Your trimmer will only run out of gas when you’re 35ft or more away from your truck.

25. Your friends can get away with a hangover at work, you can't.

26. You thought about what it would be like to have a battle with someone, using your trimmer.

27. There is at least one customer you have that you'd like to have a beer with, & five customer’s wives you'd like to get drunk.

28. One customer will always have furniture & toys lying around on the lawn, every time you arrive.

29. You get angry when you open a gate that instantly swings closed while trying to get your mower into the backyard.

30. When you think about & test a new tactic on how to mow a lawn the most efficient way possible, you end up wasting quite a bit of time.

[armowing]

Awsome!!!

MAn i needed that! LMAO

[kdexpd]

One thing I've learned is if you have more than one chainsaw and you only bring one to a job across town, it will not start. Or in my case, the damn choke lever will pull right out of the hole. 10 minutes before dark and all I have is a few stupid small limbs to trim. I had to drive all the way back to get the other saw. This also works great with my trimmers. It has happened to me several times already. I'm gonna catch that damn chainsaw gnome and I'm gonna beat his little goofy red hat wearin' A$$!