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.
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