April Showers bring May Showers
Apr. 7th, 2010 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuOr so it seems here in the rainy Pacific Northwest.
We own a reel mower--the sort that you push to make the blades turn. No engine of any kind. We bought it when we decided that paying someone to mow the lawn every week was an extravagance we could do without. In part we bought it because it would require minimal maintenance--I've paid to have the blades sharpened once in the three(?) years we've owned it. In part we bought it because I figured pushing it around the yard once or twice* a week would be good exercise, and it is.
The only real drawback to this mower (aside from when I'm just feeling lazy and don't WANNA use it) is that if the grass is allowed to get too long, the reel mower won't cut it. It just pushes the blades of grass down and rolls over them without catching them in the blades. In the spring (and sometimes in the summer if it's particularly wet) a week or more can go by without it ever being dry enough to cut the grass. And during the bright, warm (and wet) spring and summer, the grass grows fast.
Because we don't own a conventional mower, more than once I've been forced to use a WEED WACKER to hack the grass down to a manageable length so I could resume cutting it. That's a slow and laborious process, let me tell you. Fortunately our front and side yard are pretty small. The front yard consists of the parking strip between the street and the sidewalk, and a narrow area between the planters next to the sidewalk and the large shrubs lining the front of the house. The side yard isn't a lot larger. The back yard is another story, but still moderately small--at least compared to the quarter acre my parents' backyard occupies.
Today was just such a day. The first really dry day in close to two weeks. So I dragooned Twoson to pull weeds whilst I hacked the front and side yards down to acceptable length. I raked out the parking strip and then used the mower on it. I weedwacked the hell out of the grass and weeds in amongst the shrubs (but without harming Snippy's flower!). Twoson pulled weeds and sprayed Round-Up into the root holes. (We hates dandelions, we does!) I even cleaned up the street in front of the house, clearing the storm drain until the next time mud and leaves and crap clog it up.
And I got in some writing before I started all this. (I politely didn't start the weedwacker until after 10 a.m.).
While we were out there taking advantage of the dry weather (it's supposed to rain again tomorrow), I swear it sounded like every lawn mower in the neighborhood started up over about a five minute period. There was an orgy of frantic mowing and the noise tapered off again. Clearly we were not the only ones taking advantage of this window of opportunity.
*In the height of summer, I have to mow the yard twice a week lest it get too long.
We own a reel mower--the sort that you push to make the blades turn. No engine of any kind. We bought it when we decided that paying someone to mow the lawn every week was an extravagance we could do without. In part we bought it because it would require minimal maintenance--I've paid to have the blades sharpened once in the three(?) years we've owned it. In part we bought it because I figured pushing it around the yard once or twice* a week would be good exercise, and it is.
The only real drawback to this mower (aside from when I'm just feeling lazy and don't WANNA use it) is that if the grass is allowed to get too long, the reel mower won't cut it. It just pushes the blades of grass down and rolls over them without catching them in the blades. In the spring (and sometimes in the summer if it's particularly wet) a week or more can go by without it ever being dry enough to cut the grass. And during the bright, warm (and wet) spring and summer, the grass grows fast.
Because we don't own a conventional mower, more than once I've been forced to use a WEED WACKER to hack the grass down to a manageable length so I could resume cutting it. That's a slow and laborious process, let me tell you. Fortunately our front and side yard are pretty small. The front yard consists of the parking strip between the street and the sidewalk, and a narrow area between the planters next to the sidewalk and the large shrubs lining the front of the house. The side yard isn't a lot larger. The back yard is another story, but still moderately small--at least compared to the quarter acre my parents' backyard occupies.
Today was just such a day. The first really dry day in close to two weeks. So I dragooned Twoson to pull weeds whilst I hacked the front and side yards down to acceptable length. I raked out the parking strip and then used the mower on it. I weedwacked the hell out of the grass and weeds in amongst the shrubs (but without harming Snippy's flower!). Twoson pulled weeds and sprayed Round-Up into the root holes. (We hates dandelions, we does!) I even cleaned up the street in front of the house, clearing the storm drain until the next time mud and leaves and crap clog it up.
And I got in some writing before I started all this. (I politely didn't start the weedwacker until after 10 a.m.).
While we were out there taking advantage of the dry weather (it's supposed to rain again tomorrow), I swear it sounded like every lawn mower in the neighborhood started up over about a five minute period. There was an orgy of frantic mowing and the noise tapered off again. Clearly we were not the only ones taking advantage of this window of opportunity.
*In the height of summer, I have to mow the yard twice a week lest it get too long.