We have a reel mower. We bought it for environmental reasons and we keep it because we're not really fussy about our lawn. It always looks like it was mowed by teenagers, because -- guess what? -- it was.
However.
We've had a lot of rain followed by lovely warm days, and the grass has gone berserk. Like, if all of its little seed heads were eyes, each one would be gleaming with hegemonious thoughts. (Google says hegemonious is not a word, but I scoff at Google.) Reel mowers don't work very well on grass that is plotting its takeover of the Western hemisphere.
Lately our grass has been looking like it was mowed by a pair of drunken gibbons. Make that amputee drunken gibbons. It was a mess out there. Elwood and I agreed that it was out of control, even for people who are not fussy about the lawn.
I went out to forestall the coup, and I am here to tell you it was a near thing. Picture the grass winding around my ankles, trying to pull me down. (That poem seems a little more sinister now. Let you work -- harrumph.) Picture me stopping again and again to untangle the tall grass from the mower workings. Picture me having John Deere fantasies. A giant riding mower of my very own would show this yard who's boss, I thought. (To appreciate the preposterousness of this fantasy, you should know that our yard is maaaybe 50 feet wide and not much deeper.)
By the time I was done I was beyond cranky. I wanted to salt the lawn, like Scipio at Carthage. I wanted to stand on the front porch and bellow "Carthago delenda est," except with grass in place of Carthage.
Just as I finished that paragraph, a nearby neighbor fired up a lawnmower. I was the one who pushed to buy the reel mower in the first place (cleaner! greener! safer!) but I have to say, right in this moment I'm having some motor envy.
Times like this it's nice to have a friendly neighbor you could borrow a motor mower from. We have friends who have a small car that satisfies 99% of their needs and they just borrow our minivan for those times they need something bigger, like a trip to IKEA or Home Depot.
Or you can contemplate the philosophical merits of character derived from struggle. :)
Posted by: Sarah | May 18, 2013 at 03:50 PM
I share a battery mower. It seems crazy for every house to have one.
I tried a reel mower, but I couldn't get it to cut the grass. I'm still not sure if the mower was defective or I was. I used one at my last house and it was fine, but tragically it got lost in the move.
Posted by: Beth | May 19, 2013 at 01:27 AM
I loved our reel mower. I loved that you could actually hear people talk while you mowed the grass. I loved that I didn't have to annoy the neighbors who were out enjoying their deck. Unfortunately, we purchased a brand that the reel was to be replaced rather than sharpened and they stopped making them. :P We bought an electric mower. My real aspiration is to rid ourselves of grass completely...by xeriscaping rather than salting though. Not sure what our neighbors will think.
Why don't we live closer to each other?
Posted by: Angela | May 19, 2013 at 08:25 AM
Maybe you could find a teenager with a gleam in his/her eye and the family gas mower in the garage, and ask him/her to mow your lawn if this happens again next spring? Life is short, you're paying your environmental dues, teens need cash, blah blah blah.
Sometimes it's OK to cheat a little while getting back to beauty base zero (oops, Hunger Games reference there, maybe not putting anyone in a pro-gas motor mood).
Posted by: Jody | May 19, 2013 at 12:58 PM