Jim's Brain Online

A while back, I mentioned the possibility that I might actually mow my lawn this summer.

I really don't have much of a choice. With the rain we've been getting, my grass would likely hit my knees if left alone. Soon after that, we would probably be fined (or at least warned).

I've no real interest in my lawn, but I would prefer it reach certain minimal standards of niceness. What sort of standards? Basically, I don't want the lawn to look like unsettled grasslands.

Sadly, my own actions tend to defeat my reaching even those very low expectations. In a fit of environmentalism and cheapness (with an emphasis on the cheapness), I bought a pushmower rather than the standard gas-guzzling powermower.

There are advantages to pushmowers. They are purely mechanical, powered only by the push you give them. They don't use gas (or oil) and thus you don' t have to store gas. Better yet, they always start and they're cheaper to buy. They take less space than powermowers, and, in seven years, I've never had to bring it in to get the mechanism fixed.

Also, their method of cutting is supposedly healthier for the grass.

There's just one problem. While they do cut grass very well, they don't cut certain sorts of weeds very well. What sorts? The sort of weed that is also a type of grass, one that is too thin to be caught by the pushmower's whirring blades and thus tends to grow high enough to go to seed, spreading even more copies of itself throughout the lawn.

Cutting the grass makes these weeds even more obvious than they were before, making the lawn look even worse. In other years, I've had local kids drop by pushing powermowers the day after, asking if they could mow the lawn.

Now I trim the taller weeds with an electric trimmer, much to the amusement of some of my neighbors.

Actually, the pushmower itself provides amusement to not only neighborhood children (who sometimes gather when I mow), but also people in passing cars. "Passing" cars doesn't really describe the cars accurately. A more accurate description would be stopping cars.

People stop to tell me how they haven't seen one of those mowers since the 1960's, remembering their fathers mowing the lawn.

One person stopped to tell me that he would mow my lawn himself--if I paid him. When I said no, he attempted to sell me a powermower. After that he left, but, then came back the next day and attempted to sell me a powermower again.

Back in the 1960's, back when pushmowers were used regularly, they must have had some way to deal with the weeds. That or they had lower standards for how their lawn looked.

The next time someone stops to reminisce, I'll have to ask them about that.