This is the lettuce in question (yeah, I know; it needs thinned.) Didn't my DH come up with a neat way to keep bunnies out? Anyway, hopefully this will make heads at some point, or DH is really going to be disappointed. Iceberg is his favorite kind of lettuce (mine is Buttercrunch.) Thanks for all your help!

Greetings all - further status on my maintenance. Removing the shaft that goes through the reel went easier than I feared! Remove the shaft bearing covers and the tapered wheel bearings from the non-driven side. On the driven side with the pulley wheel, the pulley was reluctant to come off, so I removed the driven-side bearing cap. Then removed the bolt inside the housing that goes through the reel and the shaft, and the shaft pulled right out. Plan is now to put another hole in the housing at the 4:00 o'clock position (per Jay's photo) and put it back together. Bill

Exactly, Tom. It isn't up to the company doing the job, but the standards they need to adhere to. It's a thankless job and a dangerous one and what they deal with are problems they didn't initially create. It's not their responsibility to do remedial work for any issue not related to protecting the lines. In my case, however, the hollow tree was still leaning over their lines and sooner or later would have taken them out, had we not remediated the problem. What I noticed in that photograph was the 'half-tree' behind the tree in question. If it remains healthy enough to continue growing it shall become a continuing issue for power line clearance. What is more cost effective for them. To have to address repeatedly, or to have just removed it the first time and been done with it? I know this has to be a touchy issue between utilities and land owners......but maintenance and its cost is a secondary issue. Power outages from downed limbs and emergency repairs are the primary ones and one trip in the dead of winter or storm situations don't come cheap.

Call me obsessive but I'd ask if the walls are sheet rock/dry wall/wall board or not. If not, the house could be old. Then - is it overbuilt? Then it's old. I had a vintage 1980 house that used all the modern methods, minimizing materials, etc. It was decently built but we sold it in '86. Then I moved to a 1972 house that was built to self destruct in 20 years and OMG it was trying so hard! By now even the supposedly permanently finished aluminum siding has been painted (so says google earth.) I still wonder if the 1980 one is holding up better than the '72 one - did it need as much work to keep it alive? (The vinyl siding hasn't been painted.) That would probably have to make a change to my "overbuilt" criterion. So now it's all back down to the plaster. The '72 is 42 years old now. In 8 years, by what people say here, it can be called "old." It still won't have any of the attributes for which we value old houses. As I work to restore my present 100 year old windows I can confidently say I wouldn't hesitate to replace the 42 year old ones. This all brings it back to the overbuilding, no matter how many crazy hipster kids are fascinated by the '70's. (Shiver.) I say it's the attributes, not the numbers.