It's a tale as old as time -- where time is defined as at least 15 years. Spring has arrived here in Northern California and the greenery has exploded. In another month or two everything will turn brown and invite any passing spark to become a full size blaze, but right now the weeds are making hay while the sun shines.
This includes my lawn. Most of my front lawn has been taken over by Weedus spikus spp purpleus with some Weedus burrus spp yellowus. The back lawn too. The bees are very very happy. A few (4-5?) years ago I replaced my corded electric mower with a cordless mower. Gone were the days of connecting three 50 ft extension cords and having to maneuver around them. The new mower worked great. I could cut both the front and back lawn in one go.
Then towards the end of last summer I could only cut the front lawn or the back lawn before the battery gave out. That wasn't such a hardship. I could cut one on one weekend and the other the next. At the end of the summer it's almost entirely brown anyhow, so it was just a matter of keeping random opportunistic weeds at a level that could be mistaken for grass.
But the battery's been getting worse and the weeds are starting to win. At this point I can cut about one or two rows at the highest possible setting and then it's done for the next eight hours. I have another battery on order, but they keep pushing the shipping date, so every morning and evening I go spend less than a minute making a swath through the lawn.
As you can imagine, my lawn does not exactly fit the picture of the suburban dream. Each row is a different height since I'm slowly making my way across it. Worse, there are dandelion seed pods popping up even in the most recently chopped areas, so no part of it is even. The weeds on one side of the back lawn are taller than the little dog. She seems a little intimidated by them.
Anyhow, the new battery was supposed to have shipped yesterday. Maybe it did. I'm not holding my breath, but if it didn't I may have to give in and borrow my neighbor's mower so my house doesn't disappear under a mass of greenery.
2 comments:
I hate mowing so the thought of having to go out every day and do a little makes me hope this is a nightmare you can wake from soon. If the battery doesn’t arrive, how would little dog feel about a goat?
I would love to have a goat (or two goats really since they don't like to be alone and I'm not quite ready to have goats pooping inside my house). I could probably even get my neighbors to sign off on it. But I already have nine animals to care for. Maybe after the birds kick the bucket...
Mowing for two minutes at a time is actually not that bad. The only hard part is avoiding people so you don't have to try to explain why the lawn looks like it does.
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