Mowing the Lawn

Bill has spent much of the past 2 months out of town, usually only coming home on the weekends. The past few times he has been home, it has been pouring rain. This means that our yard has not been mowed this year. It was beginning to look a bit like a jungle (weeds as tall as me). I am leaving tomorrow to go out of town for a week and Bill will be out of town for at least another week, so I decided to step up and mow the yard.

This may show how spoiled I am, but I have not mowed a yard in more than 12 years. I used to mow my mom's yard, but our storage shed was broken into and all of our lawn equipment stolen. That's when my mom decided it was easier to just pay someone to cut our grass (She probably liked the idea of having BOTH yards mowed in the same week. Parents: never price mowing the grass separately for yards. My mom did this - $10 for front and $15 for back. Needless to say, $15 was plenty for the movies, so I would mow the back, get my money, and be done). I never attempted to learn how to work mine and Bill's mower, because I never wanted that as a chore - if I don't know how to work the mower, then I can't cut the grass, right?

Now I know why I don't mow the yard - it's really hard work and definitely appreciate Bill even more for it. As you can imagine, my yard work turned into a very comical event, but I did learn some very important lessons, which is the reason for this blog:

1. Check gas levels on all lawn equipment BEFORE trying to start them. It's rather tough work trying to get a lawn mower with no gas in the tank to start.
2. A leaf blower is the best tool on earth for clearing out flower beds...so long as all that you want to stay in the flower bed is buried deep enough that it too won't blow away.
3. I finally figured out why Bill bought a pooper scooper for cleaning up behind Winston. Maybe now I will start using it.
4. If a weed can be mistaken for a small tree, maybe you should pull it from the ground rather than trying to mow over it.
5. If you give me a weed eater, I will break it.
6. The easiest way to get leaves out of the yard is not raking and bagging them (which I have done the past 3 years), but rather blowing them into the middle of the yard with the leaf blower and mowing over them.
7. Grass is destined to grow everywhere you DON'T want it but nowhere that you DO.
8. This is really not a lesson but more of an insight into how my troubled mind works sometimes. Because of all the storms we have had, our trees in the front have shed many limbs, mostly into some ground cover next to our driveway. As I was cutting the grass in the front yard, I noticed these branches and stoped mowing to go remove them. The bad scientist inside me then said, "Why waste your time? Wood is biodegradable." So I decided not to remove them and tossed the ones back that I had already removed and went back to mowing. The good scientist inside me kept nagging and nagging with "It will degrade, but that is a very slow process and could take years. Until then you will have ugly branches sticking out of your bushes." Needless to say, I went back and removed them.