Our little newsletter is emailed all over the country. We have subscribers on all 3 coasts. Here in Poughkeepsie it hasn’t stopped raining long enough to get the lawn mower out of the shed. As I sit in Washingtonville in Orange County, NY it is again overcast and sprinkling. A few years ago I posted about my love of lawn mowing, and my love of having someone else mow my lawn!
Here is a little history of my family and out battle with our lawn:
We have three kids and a new house and we have been spending a ton of time outdoors. Last year I had a landscaper mow our lawn. We moved in late July. Coming from a condo I didn’t have any of the necessary tools. This year I was contemplating hiring the landscaper back. He had great prices and was great to my family. This year we have 4 baseball games a week, school, CCD, gymnastic, birthday parties, more school, and sleep. We are booked…We love it, but we are constantly on the move.
In the middle of April lawn mowers started to go on sale and we spoke with the Landscaper about him coming back to cut the grass. Ultimately with our busy schedules the only sane thing to do was buy a lawn mower, weed-wacker, and gas can.
I know, you probably thought I was going to hire the landscaper back…I thought so too. I woke up on a Saturday to head to the first of 2 baseball games. I could hear machines running in the distance. I could smell two-stroke engine exhaust in the air, and I knew what I had to do.
Buying a machine became my only option. I looked at riders. They had headlights, all sorts of attachments, even a water bottle holder, (we’re going to call it a water holder instead of a beer holder to promote safety while working with machinery). I looked at one with big wheels, regular wheels, bagger, mulchers, and leaf sucking up tools. When it came time to buy one I chose a 22 inch walk behind, front wheel drive self- propelled unit in fire engine red. She is a thing of beauty.
The machine is loud. It makes a cloud of dust, it may even throw a few rocks and sticks around if they are on the lawn. It’s like going to a remote location. You can’t hear the phone ring, there is no blinking notifcation that you have an e-mail. You can’t hear the kids calling you to get them a drink, the dog goes inside and doesn’t bark…It’s like being alone. I wouldn’t want that all the time, but the 90 minutes it takes to mow and weed-whack is like taking a mini-vacation without having to go anywhere.
You sweat a little bit, you get a little dirty and you travel to a magical place where there is only the noise of the machine, the smell of the gas and fresh cut grass. It is a little paradise, and I couldn’t be happier about taking that trip.
My Dad taught me about the love of mowing the lawn and I can’t wait to teach my kids about it. But for now, if you see my wife at the office please don’t tell her about this e-mail. If she finds out how great mowing the lawn is she may want to do it.
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