Mowers and Money

Photo courtesy Flickr

Working in one garden for forty years leaves me with one crate of gear and one “sling blade” to manage the outdoor show. Plus a corn broom, border spade and small rake. I have used and discarded a pickup truck full of tools and seductive plastic innovations, a sizeable pickup at that, too.

Yesterday the mower showed signs of flagging, and my pard and I talked over its future. In the beginning, a graduate student of landscape architecture clued me to the wisdom of mowing minor garden debris with a flat-bladed power mower. She also clued me in to the wisdom of wearing steel-toed boots, safety goggles, and ear protection, and to the wisdom of reading the doggone manual.

We’ve used up four or five mowers since we’ve lived here. I’m suspect that’s more than average, and sometimes I wonder if there’s a mower welfare agency like the animal protection advocates. As the biker began the traditional spiritual exercise of attempting several dozen yanks to get a small engine to turn over, we considered the wisdom of our ways, if any.

A new mower will cost perhaps two or three visits from a lawn gang. We use a machine for four or five years and recycle every bit of yard waste on the site, saving around forty dollars a month in city hauling fees. In a perfect world, a local shepherd would come by weekly to feed a flock of miniature herbivores and maintain the lawn with curry, Easter dinner, and sweaters, but until that great day arrives, we’ll manage with a Briggs and Stratton mounted on pressed steel.

But next time, I’ll test the mower before I make a mess of the lawn with prunings.

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