A Push Mower for the Lawn

We have a small bit of property - our tri-level house sits on .22 acres on an odd-shaped corner lot. The house and driveway takes up quite a bit of space, with weird strips in land here and there. Even before we closed on this house, we knew we wanted a push mower for lawn-work. Less carbon foot print (actually, zero), and good for body work. We got the cheapest one we could find, an 18" Scotts push reel mower.

Hubby did it the first couple of times, showing the Tween how to do it. We really didn't have much grass, and what we did was pretty dead. Lots of thatch, mixed in with a sparse bit of green ... house was in foreclosure for 18 months so no one took care of it. One day when Hubby was out mowing the front strip, our across-the-street neighbor sauntered on over.

"Hiya. Don't have much grass, do ya?"

"No, not really."

"You don't have much money, do ya?"

Taken aback, Hubby answered, "What?"

"Well, you got this cheapo mower thing. You need to borrow my lawn mower? It works great. I just ask that you replace any gas you use."

"No. thanks. We prefer this."

"Really? It's a lot of work."

And on and on it went. This from a man (the neighbor) who is maybe 5'3" at the most, drives a huge diesel truck although he never hauls anything, makes his wife shovel snow from the sidewalks although he's home all day and she's not, and mows his lawn at 6:00 AM in the summer. Methinks there's a compensation issue going on there.

Oh, and it's the same neighbor that turned us in to the local authorities for that dead grass AND for not moving our car often enough, AND stole our alley-ers who almost took our tires which we wanted gone. AND he has apple and plum trees that he doesn't harvest, so they drop to the ground, inside and outside of his fence, where the ones that collide with the sidewalk, smash and stain and stay there until a neighborhood child experiments and gets a sick tummy.

Ooops, I got sidetracked.

I guess the moral of this story is: don't be intimidated by people who think you're just being cheap because you have a push mower. We didn't. Actually, looking at the front lawn from my desk, it's about time for Tween to do the first mowing of the season.

Hmmm... I bet he can't wait until we get grazing animals! Well, at the new place.

Updated April 5 2009: We're in a blog carnival! Check it out at: http://www.bloggingguy.com/2009/05/carnival-of-homesteading.html