Friday, June 13, 2008

ode to my lawn mower


How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1. My lawn mower simplifies my life. I don't have to get it tuned up, sharpened, or stored over the winter. As soon as the grass needs it, there it is, sitting in my garage, ready to go.

2. It saves me money. See above, plus it doesn't need gas or oil.

3. It's durable. Five years, no repairs or adjustments.

4. It keeps me in shape. It's work, but my lawn is relatively small, so it's not so much work that I can't do it in an hour or two.

5. It's green, like so many other things that I also love.

9 comments:

Maria said...

Ooohhh...this is food for thought. Because we will be in the market for a new lawn mower in about four weeks. Our lawn is bigger..but flat. I think this would be doable...but doable for a 10 year old?? One can only hope;)

Lizabeth Cain said...

Hi Maria! My ten-year-old mows the lawn, as do the neighborhood kids. When we first moved in, all the kids were fascinated by the lawn mower, so they actually used to take turns using it on our lawn. Hilarious. But it's really quite light. Even my five-year-old can do it when he's determined.

Anonymous said...

Right now we have gardeners through our property manager, which I dislike because they use lots of noisy equipment at terribly inconvenient times, like 7 pm! But if we were to have our own lawn, I know two certain kids who would be helping keep it nice :)

Tara said...

We switched back to a rotary blade mower this year. I never realized how much I hated the noise of the gas one. The gentle hum of the rotary blades is so much nicer. And the kiddo can use it, no problem!

Anonymous said...

Exercise is all well and good but if you're lazy like me that won't do at all. I use a pull behind atv mower. Now that's fun!

Anonymous said...

Apparently gas mowers are a bigger environmental disaster than cars. higher emissions, etc. etc.

I have a push mower too. It lost a screw that I need to get replaced but...

Also we reduced the amount of grass that needs mowing by digging it up and putting in raised beds for vegetables (there are recent garden photos on my blog).

Anonymous said...

Ah, how I miss our old "manual" mower. Now we have half an acre we don't even have time to mow ourselves. Like JoVE, we are looking at ways to get rid of turf and add more shrubs and edibles.

JustFrank said...

Please talk to my neighbors. They have men come in every Friday at 7am. Don't they realize the good homeschoolers are asleep!
We have zero lawn. Just flowers and edibles. And herbs.

Jean Michelle Miernik said...

Ha! I just Googled "ode to manual mower" and got your post here. I love everything about this. I was going to write my own ode for my own blog, but I'm too lazy.

Oh, and I love your blog in general. I worked two years as a substitute teacher and went partway through graduate school for School Psychology. Then I decided that most children would be better off homeschooled, and I quit the field. When I have kids, they will learn at home and out in the world.

P.S. My neighbors LOVE mowing on their rider mowers... on quarter acre lots... from the wee hours of the morning until 11:00 p.m., day in and day out. The only thing that consoles me is that my abs are WAY hotter than theirs. Hah!