Needful Things

I have never much cared for mowing the lawn. For one thing, I'm allergic to grass. Bermuda grass, Kentucky bluegrass, crab grass: if there's an allergy test for it, I'm allergic to it. For another thing, it's sweaty, uncomfortable work with minimal reward. You put in an afternoon chopping the tops off grass, and then the grass grows back.

When I moved into my house, my dad was kind enough to give me his old lawn mower. He made sure it started before he put it in the van, he filled up the tank, and he gave me the gas can, besides. Last weekend, guilt about the non-dead clumps of grass going to seed in my yard inspired me to attempt to start the mower. The attempt failed. My dad came over to help with some plumbing work mid-week (I had a leaky bathtub faucet); he was likewise unable to start the mower.

So now I own an electric mower. The kind with the cord. (I still hope to have my house furnished sometime this century, so the battery-powered mowers were out of my price range.)

The cord is an interesting thing. I managed not to run over it, but I did tangle it in not one but three rose bushes. (I have the puncture wounds to prove it.) I also discovered while untangling power cord from rosebushes that in spite of the safety features of the mower, it is possible for the mower it start itself, should the power cord get wrapped just so around the handle, and should one give the cord a tug as one is disentangling. That was exciting.

Mowing a yard that is half dirt is another interesting thing. I believe that I inhaled a few gallons of topsoil in the half-hour or so that the mowing required.

A third interesting thing is how quickly the grass bag can fill up in the process of mowing a tiny yard that is mostly dirt. Where did the grass come from? The crabgrass lies mostly flat, so I don't know how much of it the blades could have gotten, and the clumps of taller grass gone to seed are few and far between. And, I say again, the yard is small. So how did my yard waste recycling bin get full to the brim with cut grass?

At any rate, the job is done (at least for the next week or two or however long it takes me to feel guilty again). My yard doesn't look particularly better than it did before. Nor shorter. But my neighbors saw me mowing the thing, and I have a can full of grassy bits to recycle, so I suppose I accomplished something.