Leavitty

The weather has been decidedly delightful of late. My tulips, slow at first to announce themselves, are hanging on longer than usual, making me happy every day. I love spring and its bursts of life everywhere I look. Flowers that were not there when I went to bed are waving hello in the morning breeze while I have my coffee. I love these flowers.

What I don’t like is the grass that comes with the springtime weather. I have a large lawn. Unlike most of you, I have a very haphazard way of dealing with it. I have long eschewed gas-powered mowers for the old-fashioned, nonmotorized push mower. The issue with this type of mower is if the grass gets longer than three or four inches—so easy to do if you miss a week of mowing—then the mower doesn’t actually cut the grass, it just sort of bends it back. Then once the mower moves to different spot, the grass bounces right back to its full height of utterly un-movable. 

I have struggled with this situation for three years now, since I decided to save money by not paying a lawn service $40-55 a week to mow my lawn. Naively, I enter every spring thinking if I can just stay ahead of it, everything will work fine. And then something happens during the first weeks of the grass-growing season—work, chemo, rain, pathological fear of bugs, etc. 

Now it’s almost June and my grass is six inches tall. 

I ventured into the garage to see what I had that might help me get the lawn shorter so the mower stood a chance. I love that I approach lawn cutting in stages, in three-inch increments to be exact. My plan was to use the double-edged weed cutter while the weed whacker battery was being recharged. Problem was, I couldn’t find the charging base, having cleaned the tools and chargers over the winter and put them someplace that seemed intuitively smart. But was not.

After 20 minutes of swinging metal at the dandelions I realized I was losing the battle and decided I had to replace the charger. I did, but it was the wrong size. Back to the weed cutter tool. Have you ever tried to cut your back yard with an eight-inch piece of metal that you swing in an arc? I could hear the dandelions laughing at me. 

Truthfully, this column would have been finished hours ago if I hadn’t followed so many internet rabbit holes about cordless mowers. I know some of you might be shaking your head right now, saying either hire someone or get a gas-powered mower and make your life easier. I know that’s what I should do, but I don’t like gas-powered mowers and I hate spending money on my lawn. Plus, if I didn’t mow the yard, honestly, I’d never walk around the entire house, and that seems important to do on occasion. 

I pick up the new mower Monday. I’ll let everyone how that works out.