Life on the Homefront - What A Great Day for a Mow
When the HP departed for Afghanistan, he left behind the three chores that have been his sole responsibility since we were married – taking out the trash, cleaning the fish tank, and taking care of the yard. Obviously, when he was away on a trip or late coming home, I would occasionally put out the trash, and although I have never cleaned our fish tank, I vaguely remember helping my brother with it once or twice when I was younger. But the one thing I have never done is operate lawn keeping equipment. I know some women LOVE to mow the lawn for the exercise, but I don’t need exercise that badly. What I do need is to have one aspect of keeping house that is not my responsibility, that the HP wouldn’t dare ask me to do, that I can ignore even when it looks terrible, because it is not my problem. I am fairly mechanically inclined and I am not afraid of machinery, but I have remained willfully ignorant when it comes to landscaping accoutrement. I will rake leaves, I will shovel snow, I will even weed the garden, but I will not under any circumstances mow the lawn, until now.
When we were kids, my parents held an unwaveringly sexist view of dividing the household chores. The girls had to set and clear the table, do the dishes, vacuum, sort laundry, and basically undergo the sort of training that a 1930s housewife might have found useful. My brothers were responsible for two things: the lawn and the trash. My parents would probably have let me mow the lawn if I had insisted, but that would not have meant that my brothers would take over the dishes for a week. I would merely have been adding to my list of chores and subtracting from my brothers’. (Let me note here that my parents were not the sort of people against educating girls or who planned to keep us under lock and key until they arranged a suitable marriage. Apparently their plan was more along the lines of producing independent and well-educated career women who made excellent housewives as well.) Although Mrs. Neary, the widow next door to my parents, mowed her own miniscule lawn with one of those manual mowers with the rotating blade (and I can still hear the sound of that blade spinning), no other women in the neighborhood ever mowed grass, especially my mother. I know this because I have a distinct memory of one of my father’s extended business trips during what must have been a very rainy season in Washington, when my brothers were too young to operate the mower. The grass in our yard got so long that my best friend Kerry and I could pretend we were the girls from Little House on the Prairie, reenacting the famous opening scene where they run in slow motion through the field of tall grass.
When the HP and I were first married, we lived in an apartment with no landscaping responsibilities. Later we moved to a townhouse which had a lawn about as big as a dining room table, and although I probably could have groomed it with a pair of safety scissors, I took my stand and turned the “lawn” over to the man of the house. He bought the cheapest mower on the market – one step up from the mower Mrs. Neary had. About every month or so he would spend 15 minutes mowing the grass, usually not even bothering with the backyard since no one could see it and we never went out there. He had it pretty good until we moved to Kentucky, where our lawn was so huge we could have kept a family of cows grazing indefinitely. We were the only house on our end of the block, and everything as far as the eye could see was our responsibility to maintain. Clearly, the mower from the townhouse was not built to control such a lawn, but the HP resisted replacing it with the lame argument that we might next move back to a place with a little lawn. I let this go for a while, but soon mowing the grass became a 3 to 4 hour chore, and I would find myself stuck with the kids from the time the HP left for work until it was time for them to go to bed. Some super mommies may be able to handle this, but I can only take my kids until about 6:00 pm, and then I must get away from them (these days I turn on the TV, judge me if you must but at least I haven’t bundled them up and left them on the side of the highway). So in a valiant effort to reclaim some of my sanity, the HP finally went out and got a big self-propelled mower that cut the lawn maintenance time in half.
The HP regaled me with tales of the wonderful new mower, how easy it was to push, how fun cutting the grass was now. However, I had read Tom Sawyer and I saw right through his attempt to foist the lawn onto me. I cheerfully delivered cold drinks to him while he worked, and then I ran back to the safety of the air conditioning, but now I have nowhere to run. The HP had planned to give me a little lesson on all of the lawn equipment before he left, but it was never a priority since it was already almost winter. After he left though, I decided that I’d better learn how to use the leaf blower for three reasons. One, we have a car port (that’s right a car port) where leaves tend to collect, and while I could probably rake them out, no one really enjoys the sound of a metal rake repeatedly scraping concrete. Two, our housing area is overpopulated with pin oaks that drop teeny narrow leaves (the size of small feathers) that resist raking. Three, the wife of the commanding general here must have slipped on some leaves once, because now by order of the post command, every last little leaf must be hunted down and subdued into a clear plastic lawn and leaf bag.
At my request, the HP called and provided me with very clear detailed instructions on how to operate the leaf blower, and I was able to get it started without any problems. What he did not provide for me was a strategy for moving the leaves from their snug corner of the car port to the grass outside where I could get them into a bag. Imagine the scene if you will, when I fired up the blower, waded into a pile of leaves, and immediately turned the carport into my own personal snow globe. Leaves were swirling all around me and flying through the air, as I stood there like an idiot with the blower firing away. Of course I started to laugh which made my aim even worse and the cyclone of leaves even crazier, and I can only imagine what any random neighbor strolling by might have thought. Hoping to regain my composure, I took my machinery into the back yard where huge mounds of leaves had blown up against the back of the house. I managed to blow them along the house into an even bigger pile stuck behind a bush and the air conditioning unit. In a last attempt to salvage some use out of the stupid thing, I took it over to the little fenced drying yard (that’s right, I said drying yard) where more leaves had piled up, but after blowing them from a manageable pile into a strung out mess, I gave up, returned the blower to the shed and found my rusty rake.
I have only ventured into the shed since then to find holiday decorations or a cooler or to retrieve a tool from the HP’s tool coffin. However, when I returned home from spring break this week, the lawn had taken on a life of its own and if not for the kids’ bikes in the car port, the neighbors might have thought our house was abandoned. As a kid, I never understood why my dad thought clover and violets and buttercups in the lawn were such a bad thing – after all, clover was still green and the flowers were pretty. Unfortunately, now I realize that they are in fact weeds that can get quite tall and shaggy when left to their own devices. The tallest weeds in the lawn were probably 18 inches high, although the most prevalent were some things with purple flowers and teeny little leaves that went around and around their stalk. I knew that unless a kid knocked on the door that evening and offered to do it, I was going to have to mow the lawn myself. So I emailed the HP and he called the next day with instructions for starting the mower. I was not intimidated about starting it, since I’d had such success with the leaf blower, but as soon as I pulled the mower out of the shed, I was in trouble. I couldn’t find the little button that I was supposed to push to prime the engine so that I could start it. I looked everywhere I thought it might be, but couldn’t find it, so I went to look for the manual, but I couldn’t find the manual, so I went online to look at the manual, but the online lawnmower manual said to look at the engine manual to find out how to operate the engine.
I suppose at this point a normal person might have sought out a neighbor for help, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I knew they would think I was an idiot, and even if I went and got my analytical chemistry notebook from college and showed them how I could diagram the optics of an infrared spectrometer, they would have to tell the other neighbors that I was a dumb girl who didn’t know how to start the mower. Instead I got a pencil and went out and copied down every name and number on the stinking engine, and then plugged it all into Google to see what came up. The picture of the Briggs and Stratton engine that came up had a bright red button on it, and next to the button in bright red rather stylized letters were the words “PUSH 3X TO PRIME.” I knew there was no such thing on our mower, but I went out to look again, and sure enough on the front of the mower engine were the bright red words and the bright red button. In my defense, I never considered looking on the front for the button to prime the engine, because the only thing I know that needs to be started from the front are those cars with the engine cranks that the Waltons used to drive around. Anyway, I pushed the button as directed, pulled back the safety on the handle, yanked the pull string, and nothing happened. I had pretty much reached the end of my rope with the mower, but I figured I would add gas to it, and try one more time. Unfortunately we have two red plastic fuel cans in our shed, one for the blower and one for the mower. I couldn’t see into them, so I thought maybe I’d give them a quick sniff and see which one smelled more like a gas station. Then I was afraid that the neighbors might think I was so distraught over the separation from my husband that I had taken up huffing. In the end I just picked the can that looked older (since the mower is older than the blower) and dumped it in. This time after I primed the engine and pulled the string, the stupid thing finally started.
Our side yard is comprised of 30% weeds, 40% dirt, and 30% rocks, sticks, and debris. When I ran the mower over it, I couldn’t tell where I had mowed and where I hadn’t because I was so distracted by the alarming sounds of debris pinging around down in the mower blades. I went up and down and side to side on the yard, and even attempted the incredible shrinking square technique that the HP favors, but I’m sure it was obvious that I had no idea what I was doing. Every time the noise of nongrass items inside the mower got loud, I would turn and go the other way. After a while I decided that it looked as good as it was ever going to, and moved on to the front yard. The front yard is comprised of 95% weeds and 5% debris. We also have trees, a lamp post, metal access plates, and other obstacles that make a straight mowing grid rather impossible to follow. However, the weeds were so high I was able to determine where I had mowed and where I hadn’t, and when I was done, I thought it looked pretty good. In fact, I probably mowed it with a thoroughness that no man in the neighborhood would have bothered with, since I didn’t want any man in the neighborhood scoffing at my lawn.
Our back yard is composed of 75% dirt and debris, 20% moss, and 5% little weed patches. The weed patches are not close to the house, but I can see them out the back windows, growing taller and waving to me. Clearly after my experience with the frightening sounds of the side yard, I will not be taking the mower back there to tame the little weeds. What the back yard needs is a weed wacker, and we just happen to have one. All I need to do is figure out how to detach the blower from its engine and exchange it for the weed wacker attachment. If I send a quick email to the HP, he will no doubt provide me with the detailed instructions I need to accomplish the switch. One of these days I will, and I’ll let you know how that goes. For now, however, I think I will just keep the blinds closed in the back windows and instead look out the front window at my well groomed lawn and the trees whose leaves are just beginning to sprout and are months away from falling.
When we were kids, my parents held an unwaveringly sexist view of dividing the household chores. The girls had to set and clear the table, do the dishes, vacuum, sort laundry, and basically undergo the sort of training that a 1930s housewife might have found useful. My brothers were responsible for two things: the lawn and the trash. My parents would probably have let me mow the lawn if I had insisted, but that would not have meant that my brothers would take over the dishes for a week. I would merely have been adding to my list of chores and subtracting from my brothers’. (Let me note here that my parents were not the sort of people against educating girls or who planned to keep us under lock and key until they arranged a suitable marriage. Apparently their plan was more along the lines of producing independent and well-educated career women who made excellent housewives as well.) Although Mrs. Neary, the widow next door to my parents, mowed her own miniscule lawn with one of those manual mowers with the rotating blade (and I can still hear the sound of that blade spinning), no other women in the neighborhood ever mowed grass, especially my mother. I know this because I have a distinct memory of one of my father’s extended business trips during what must have been a very rainy season in Washington, when my brothers were too young to operate the mower. The grass in our yard got so long that my best friend Kerry and I could pretend we were the girls from Little House on the Prairie, reenacting the famous opening scene where they run in slow motion through the field of tall grass.
When the HP and I were first married, we lived in an apartment with no landscaping responsibilities. Later we moved to a townhouse which had a lawn about as big as a dining room table, and although I probably could have groomed it with a pair of safety scissors, I took my stand and turned the “lawn” over to the man of the house. He bought the cheapest mower on the market – one step up from the mower Mrs. Neary had. About every month or so he would spend 15 minutes mowing the grass, usually not even bothering with the backyard since no one could see it and we never went out there. He had it pretty good until we moved to Kentucky, where our lawn was so huge we could have kept a family of cows grazing indefinitely. We were the only house on our end of the block, and everything as far as the eye could see was our responsibility to maintain. Clearly, the mower from the townhouse was not built to control such a lawn, but the HP resisted replacing it with the lame argument that we might next move back to a place with a little lawn. I let this go for a while, but soon mowing the grass became a 3 to 4 hour chore, and I would find myself stuck with the kids from the time the HP left for work until it was time for them to go to bed. Some super mommies may be able to handle this, but I can only take my kids until about 6:00 pm, and then I must get away from them (these days I turn on the TV, judge me if you must but at least I haven’t bundled them up and left them on the side of the highway). So in a valiant effort to reclaim some of my sanity, the HP finally went out and got a big self-propelled mower that cut the lawn maintenance time in half.
The HP regaled me with tales of the wonderful new mower, how easy it was to push, how fun cutting the grass was now. However, I had read Tom Sawyer and I saw right through his attempt to foist the lawn onto me. I cheerfully delivered cold drinks to him while he worked, and then I ran back to the safety of the air conditioning, but now I have nowhere to run. The HP had planned to give me a little lesson on all of the lawn equipment before he left, but it was never a priority since it was already almost winter. After he left though, I decided that I’d better learn how to use the leaf blower for three reasons. One, we have a car port (that’s right a car port) where leaves tend to collect, and while I could probably rake them out, no one really enjoys the sound of a metal rake repeatedly scraping concrete. Two, our housing area is overpopulated with pin oaks that drop teeny narrow leaves (the size of small feathers) that resist raking. Three, the wife of the commanding general here must have slipped on some leaves once, because now by order of the post command, every last little leaf must be hunted down and subdued into a clear plastic lawn and leaf bag.
At my request, the HP called and provided me with very clear detailed instructions on how to operate the leaf blower, and I was able to get it started without any problems. What he did not provide for me was a strategy for moving the leaves from their snug corner of the car port to the grass outside where I could get them into a bag. Imagine the scene if you will, when I fired up the blower, waded into a pile of leaves, and immediately turned the carport into my own personal snow globe. Leaves were swirling all around me and flying through the air, as I stood there like an idiot with the blower firing away. Of course I started to laugh which made my aim even worse and the cyclone of leaves even crazier, and I can only imagine what any random neighbor strolling by might have thought. Hoping to regain my composure, I took my machinery into the back yard where huge mounds of leaves had blown up against the back of the house. I managed to blow them along the house into an even bigger pile stuck behind a bush and the air conditioning unit. In a last attempt to salvage some use out of the stupid thing, I took it over to the little fenced drying yard (that’s right, I said drying yard) where more leaves had piled up, but after blowing them from a manageable pile into a strung out mess, I gave up, returned the blower to the shed and found my rusty rake.
I have only ventured into the shed since then to find holiday decorations or a cooler or to retrieve a tool from the HP’s tool coffin. However, when I returned home from spring break this week, the lawn had taken on a life of its own and if not for the kids’ bikes in the car port, the neighbors might have thought our house was abandoned. As a kid, I never understood why my dad thought clover and violets and buttercups in the lawn were such a bad thing – after all, clover was still green and the flowers were pretty. Unfortunately, now I realize that they are in fact weeds that can get quite tall and shaggy when left to their own devices. The tallest weeds in the lawn were probably 18 inches high, although the most prevalent were some things with purple flowers and teeny little leaves that went around and around their stalk. I knew that unless a kid knocked on the door that evening and offered to do it, I was going to have to mow the lawn myself. So I emailed the HP and he called the next day with instructions for starting the mower. I was not intimidated about starting it, since I’d had such success with the leaf blower, but as soon as I pulled the mower out of the shed, I was in trouble. I couldn’t find the little button that I was supposed to push to prime the engine so that I could start it. I looked everywhere I thought it might be, but couldn’t find it, so I went to look for the manual, but I couldn’t find the manual, so I went online to look at the manual, but the online lawnmower manual said to look at the engine manual to find out how to operate the engine.
I suppose at this point a normal person might have sought out a neighbor for help, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I knew they would think I was an idiot, and even if I went and got my analytical chemistry notebook from college and showed them how I could diagram the optics of an infrared spectrometer, they would have to tell the other neighbors that I was a dumb girl who didn’t know how to start the mower. Instead I got a pencil and went out and copied down every name and number on the stinking engine, and then plugged it all into Google to see what came up. The picture of the Briggs and Stratton engine that came up had a bright red button on it, and next to the button in bright red rather stylized letters were the words “PUSH 3X TO PRIME.” I knew there was no such thing on our mower, but I went out to look again, and sure enough on the front of the mower engine were the bright red words and the bright red button. In my defense, I never considered looking on the front for the button to prime the engine, because the only thing I know that needs to be started from the front are those cars with the engine cranks that the Waltons used to drive around. Anyway, I pushed the button as directed, pulled back the safety on the handle, yanked the pull string, and nothing happened. I had pretty much reached the end of my rope with the mower, but I figured I would add gas to it, and try one more time. Unfortunately we have two red plastic fuel cans in our shed, one for the blower and one for the mower. I couldn’t see into them, so I thought maybe I’d give them a quick sniff and see which one smelled more like a gas station. Then I was afraid that the neighbors might think I was so distraught over the separation from my husband that I had taken up huffing. In the end I just picked the can that looked older (since the mower is older than the blower) and dumped it in. This time after I primed the engine and pulled the string, the stupid thing finally started.
Our side yard is comprised of 30% weeds, 40% dirt, and 30% rocks, sticks, and debris. When I ran the mower over it, I couldn’t tell where I had mowed and where I hadn’t because I was so distracted by the alarming sounds of debris pinging around down in the mower blades. I went up and down and side to side on the yard, and even attempted the incredible shrinking square technique that the HP favors, but I’m sure it was obvious that I had no idea what I was doing. Every time the noise of nongrass items inside the mower got loud, I would turn and go the other way. After a while I decided that it looked as good as it was ever going to, and moved on to the front yard. The front yard is comprised of 95% weeds and 5% debris. We also have trees, a lamp post, metal access plates, and other obstacles that make a straight mowing grid rather impossible to follow. However, the weeds were so high I was able to determine where I had mowed and where I hadn’t, and when I was done, I thought it looked pretty good. In fact, I probably mowed it with a thoroughness that no man in the neighborhood would have bothered with, since I didn’t want any man in the neighborhood scoffing at my lawn.
Our back yard is composed of 75% dirt and debris, 20% moss, and 5% little weed patches. The weed patches are not close to the house, but I can see them out the back windows, growing taller and waving to me. Clearly after my experience with the frightening sounds of the side yard, I will not be taking the mower back there to tame the little weeds. What the back yard needs is a weed wacker, and we just happen to have one. All I need to do is figure out how to detach the blower from its engine and exchange it for the weed wacker attachment. If I send a quick email to the HP, he will no doubt provide me with the detailed instructions I need to accomplish the switch. One of these days I will, and I’ll let you know how that goes. For now, however, I think I will just keep the blinds closed in the back windows and instead look out the front window at my well groomed lawn and the trees whose leaves are just beginning to sprout and are months away from falling.
posted by Shannon at 11:27 PM
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