The Art of Mowing

Mowing grass is a summer pastime up here!  Many people spend countless summer hours mowing their grass.  I am counted among them.  Most of us have very large plots of grass to mow and a rider is the required equipment unless you have absolutely nothing else to do with your time and want to push a mower... for days.

As I said in my last post, since we are blessed with 16 hours of daylight in the summer, things just grow!  The grass especially!  Throw in a little, or a lot, of rain and you get shaggy, deep grass in no time at all!  Mowing once a week just doesn't always cut it.  hehe!

Spending two to three hours riding circles or lines around the yard gives you a lot of time to think. "I wonder how people make those cool patterns in their yard when they mow?".

This is my best mowing pattern so far.....

 "After I finish I should go and weed those strawberries.".  "I'll bet everyone is on the beach relaxing and talking about interesting things, while I am riding back and forth in my yard.".  "I love how the yard looks right after it is mowed, so nice and neat!".  "Damn, this ground is bumpy!  My spine is not going to like me tonight!".

"I hate trees!  Well, I hate having to mow around them."

 "Maybe I should blog about this."  The list goes on and on with the profound thoughts that run through my head while I mow.  It's a vast wasteland in there people!  I don't dare listen to music while mowing because I am sure I would mow over something or the mower would start making funny noises and with my earbuds blasting away my favorite tunes I would never hear the broken parts churning around or notice the large tree branch I just captured.

Mowing attire is quite fetching.

There are sunglasses, to protect my eyes.  A hat to keep my hair out of my eyes and to protect my already sun damaged and wrinkled face.  Protective ear gear is a must!  I wear leather garden gloves because when you mow around all those damn trees there are many low hanging branches that seem to be right at face level and I have to give them the stiff arm, quickly duck so I don't get smacked in the face when they rebound, and keep mowing along.  I always wear the oldest pair of running shoes for the job as to keep my nice shoes nice. On this particular day I was forced to wear my husbands rain jacket because it was a bit cool, windy and spitty.  Turns out it was the perfect time to mow....I sure wasn't missing any quality beach time.

Choosing the right day to mow is certainly an art.  You don't want to mow right after it rains.  The results are large clumps of wet grass randomly strewn around the yard.  You really don't want to mow on a really hot day, you need to be on the beach instead.  If you mow too long after the last mowing the yard looks more like a hay field with clippings that could be baled.  Then again if you mow too soon after the last mowing you could just be wasting your valuable time.  Windy days are good to mow because the clippings can just blow around and disappear.  Cloudy days are good in my book.  My delicate skin does not bake in the sun and I don't feel like the rest of the world is having fun on the beach without me.  FOMO (fear of missing out) is at it's peak on sunny days.

It is a bit funny that we have a very tiny lawn at home and pay a very wonderful man every week to come and mow, edge and clean our yard.  A job that takes him all of 20 minutes.  Up here I spend 2 1/2 hours mowing the farmhouse yard and another 1 1/2 hours mowing three cottage lawns.  If only Oscar could come up and help!  The view up here is a lot better than the view from our yard at home, so I guess it is a good trade off.  Yeah, right!  I must say though that I take some strange pleasure in admiring a freshly mowed lawn.  Must be the same side of me that loves the look of freshly vacuumed carpets.  Like I said before....it's a vast wasteland up there.