Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
I love the beautiful, lush green lawn (and I use the word “lawn” loosely) that this seemingly unending rain is creating. BUT… It’s throwing a wrench into my lawn mowing routine.
Using battery-powered lawn mowing and edging equipment, I have developed a method of keeping my half-acre-ish lawn looking decent. It’s a large job for an old man in his 70s, but I enjoy doing it as I like to walk and regularly do at least 6,000 steps six days a week. Of course, on the days I need to mow, it’s more like 10,000 or more. It keeps me somewhat healthy, but it is not easy, especially when it is hot and humid.
With a quiet electric mower, I can cut the grass early in the morning on hot days; at least that has been the routine for my first 4 years as an Okie. This year is different, but I don’t think I have to tell anybody who lives around here about that. I am seeing more rain this year, and it’s messing up my standard operating procedure. It’s kinda nice not to have to water the yard and still have a lush green lawn that looks great from across the street. But this much rain had brought forth a few new issues for me to deal with when it comes to my landscaping regimen.
First of all, I was used to doing my mowing over 3 days a week. That worked well to keep it trim without sending me to physical therapy. It didn’t stay as nice and green as it has been the last month or so, but neither did most of the neighbors. I got used to having to water and even bought a cool self-propelled sprinkler that is fun to use.
It has rained so much this year that the ground is saturated, and a flash flood alert is becoming normal. And this lush green lawn needs mowing after about 3 days. It would probably look better longer if it weren’t 20 to 30% weeds. The weeds grow faster than the grass and are only a non-issue when the grass is trimmed. And it gets tall fast, so using my regular schedule of mowing over 3 days is now taking me more like 5 days to accomplish. And now you see the problem, now it takes me 5 days to mow a yard that needs to be trimmed in 3 days.
It’s taking me longer to mow because I use electric mulch mowers. They clog up when the grass is so wet and tall. Being battery-powered, it worked out fine when the batteries ran out of juice in 40 minutes of easy use. That was a non-problem for me as I run out of juice in about the same amount of time. They don’t last 40 minutes when the task is so much more difficult, and neither do I.
And I can’t mow when it’s raining or when it has recently rained. Mowing early in the morning does not work for me either, as the grass is way too wet. I have to wait until the sun has had an opportunity to dry the grass,s and by then it is way too hot for me to be out there. But I have no choice. If I skip a day, it just gets that much taller by the time I get ‘er done. Enough whining.
My neighbor Paul posted a picture of his lawn looking nice across the street from me. I posted a snarky response that now I would have to get mine done. It was all in fun, and we got a good laugh out of that. Then my “other neighbor, Darrell,” mowed his lawn and, sharing a lawn area between our driveways, it looked very obvious that I needed to man up and get out there, but it started to rain again, and my side just got too big. So, I took a picture showing our shared driveway strip, looking across to Paul’s beautiful new mowed lawn. Just having fun with it, again with some snarky comment about liking the “MOW Hawk” look. I like to keep up when I can, but I can use my “old man card,” and that bought me about 3 or 4 more days. At the rate this grass is growing, when I finally got my side of the driveways done, I kidded Darrell that now it was his turn to have the tall side.
It’s fun having fun neighbors with great senses of humor instead of a homeowners association run by a Karen writing me up for slacking off, even if I had good reason to. So, as of today, I’ve caught up with my yard and finished the front. It’s mowed and edged and looks great. But now my backyard is getting tall again, and Darrell’s out there mowing his as I type this. Guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow…
