Here I mow again…

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

I have a love-hate relationship with outdoor work. I do enjoy being outside, and I usually get satisfaction of getting the job done — like building a coop for my wife’s chickens or mulching the flower beds. I feel productive..

But cutting the grass? I hate it.

It just seems so pointless. It’s like shaving — only instead of your face, it’s a half-acre lot. Now, again, it’s not the act of mowing the yard that I hate. It’s good exercise, I can put on my headphones and listen to all the classic country or rock that I want, and again, there’s the satisfaction of a job well done…

For a minute!

Yes, I feel like by the time I’ve finished mowing the yard, it’s already starting to grow back. It’s not so bad now, since it’s just barely spring, but this time next month, it becomes almost a

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weekly thing — or it would be, but to keep the shaving metaphor going from earlier, my yard will definitely have a “five o’clock shadow” before I mow it again.

Now, I admittedly like the way a newly-mown lawn looks (and smells) but I’m not a lawn nut or anything.

My Mom, though… she’s almost 72 and she’ll be out there on her kneed in the yard basically daring a weed to try and sprout in her yard. Me? I just wish all the various grasses in my yard grew at the same rate.

But it was time, to this afternoon, after I was done with the newspaper, I dragged the ol’ lawnmower out of the beck corner of the shed where it has been waiting since I shoved it back there last October. Yes, I had to work my way through a bunch of Christmas stuff and tools that I have neglected to put away and assorted junk to get to it, but I got it out.

And… miracle of miracles, it cranked right up! I basically trreat my lawnmowers as “disposable” equipment — I buy the cheapest one Walmart sells and then work the heck out of it until it dies of neglect. If I get three mowing seasons out of a mower, I figure I got my money’s worth.

And this one is on its fifth year! I distinctly remember buying it during the whole Covid deal — me in my mask, the Walmart curbside pickup guy in his mask. Good times… so if it makes it through the summer, cool!

Yeah, it blows thick gray smoke when it cranks and the blade is super-bent from all the thick sticks I run over instead of picking them up, but it still gets the job done!

I don’t know if you remember how windy it was last week, but it made for an interesting mowing experience, with all the chopped up leaves (again, that I just mowed over as I refused to rake them up this winter) making little swirling dust devils (leaf devils?) as I went. The real fun was after I finished mowing and trying to use my blower to clear off the porch and the driveway. It was an exercise in futility, so I gave up and let Mother Nature whisk the debris off to wherever it ended up.

I did also put down some Weed & Feed and some Turf Builder so it was more of a low-effort rather than a no-effort affair.

I did not, however, break out the weedeater. It’s a little too early for that and I hate weedeating more than I hate mowing…