To know it works----true bliss.

I'm interviewing a lady from South Africa who sells equipment like feller bunchers, articulated trucks and skidders. She's a sales rep for Modern Machinery, and she spends a lot of time with loggers.

In preparation for this interview, I skimmed through the Modern Machinery website. In looking under the "service" link, I learned that the company stands firmly behind its equipment by having fully trained technicians available 24-7. They'll go to the field, armed with cell phones and computers filled with data needed to make repairs on the job.

It must be a good feeling for all those loggers to know that they can count on their equipment to work and it if doesn't, it will be working as quickly as humanly possible.

I know that feeling, and I've been especially thrilled this year to be able to fire up my rototiller and actually till a whole garden before it shuts down and refuses to start up again. It is truly a divine feeling to finish a job in one time frame.

So many years of having tillers sit in the garden, refusing to start or having the gears slip or having strange noises filling the air and scaring the bejeebers out of me as I take my life and the tiller in my hands and pray that it will work long enough to just finish this row----those many moments have disordered my mind and made me downright mad.

Well, my tiller works this year because Tony, my yard and garden technician, saw to it that it would work. Tilling my garden has been heavenly, to say the least.

Same is true for the lawn mowers. Of course, it's early in the season, and I haven't gone on any adventures yet to extend the lawn further than it needs to be.

Those slight detours from the usual lawn plots usually lead to mower problems cuz the grass in the new area might be 15 inches tall and clog up the whole works underneath, or the unknown rocks hidden under that 15 inches of grass might do a number on the new blades Tony put on both riding mowers.

I'm gonna try to be good this year and take good care of my lawnmowers. The goal is to not have to call Tony, who will come at almost a moment's notice, to fix my lawn equipment.

I was excited to start weed eating this year too because I've been using the original weed eater purchased among the many that sit idle here at the Lovestead. Turns out that original electric model works the best of any I've ever used. So, I went down to Co-Op Country Store the other day and bought two spools of string.

Later, I pulled out the weed eater, plugged it in, pulled the trigger, and it died. We bought that thing about 20 years ago, so it stands to reason that its motor would finally give up the ship. I didn't even get mad because it had been a good weed eater, never giving me a fraction of the problems I'd encountered with all the others purchased over the years.

Now, I've been known to suggest that the same people who manufacture weed eaters manufacture hearing aids. Over decades of the products being on the market, neither ever seem to get any better. Just ask my mother, and she'll say, "What?" Actually, my mother's hearing aid was so inefficient, she lost it and hasn't really looked very hard to find it.

She just waits for her daughter-in-law Mary to come for a visit and hopes Mary will miraculously find it like the earring that had been missing in the flower bed next to the house for more than a year. That's another story, but long story short, Mary knows how to find things, including idle hearing aids.

Back to those weed eaters that can get lost and never really missed cuz they didn't work in the first place. When my electric model died, I considered getting one of the others out and seeing if I could tolerate killing my shoulder and trying to start it a dozen times with no luck.

Nope, I didn't want to go there. So, instead I went to Wal Mart and found a cordless Black and Decker model, which can be recharged. It was all by itself on the shelf so I figured others must have sold before it. I picked it up, along with a package of string, paid for it, brought it home and fired it up.

No, I didn't fire it up. I just pulled the trigger, and it worked. Then, I discovered that it sends its own string out as needed. No more fussing with that head and the unruly spool of string that goes every which direction every time you try to squash it back in where it belongs.

The only drawback on this weed eater is that it runs out of battery in about 15 minutes, but I can get a lot of grass trimmed in that amount of time. I just take it back to the shop, hook it to the charger and go on about my business.

Two things have resulted from purchasing this weed eater. No more will I lump weed eater inventers in the same class as hearing aid folks, and I will look forward to weed eating from now on. It's especially nice to go out to the road without 40 miles of extension cord and blissfully cut that unsightly grass between the road and my lawn.

So, I'm a happy gardener and lawn care person this year. I have equipment that works, and I can tell you the air is much less "blue" as my dad used to say in regard to moments of rage. It's truly a welcome change from past frustrations, and I'm enjoying it.

Working lawn and garden equipment translates directly into a happy Marianne, just like those loggers who know that Modern Machinery will keep them on the job.