Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Staying Green

Hmmm... Not a lot going on with us these days. We've been doing some yard work, and Brad is planting our bogonias as I write this. I'm sitting here wondering if this will be the year that we finally buy a real lawnmower... Like, one with an engine and a pull-cord. For many years now, we have had a reel lawnmower. You know what I mean? One of those manual push jobbies without an engine, just rotating blades. Basically one like this but without the fancy-smancy cover over the blade:



It worked fine at our other house where we had a huge deck on the back and a small yard in the front. It took no time to mow the lawn with it. At our current house, however, our front and back yards are MUCH bigger. The lot is 170 feet deep, to give you an idea. Mowing the back yard alone takes more than 2 hours with this green contraption, with another 45 minutes or so to do the front. For a couple of years now, I have been threatening to buy a real mower, but Brad is adament that he doesn't want one. I actually hate them, too - the gas, the smell, and especially the noise. I LOATHE the sound of lawnmowers. So, sigh, probably on this one Brad will win out and we'll stick with our poky, but relatively quiet and emmission-free reel mower.

Hopefully, we'll only have to mow the lawn once before we head to Italy - we leave in just 3 weeks! Yay!

2 comments:

Mark in DE said...

When we had a very small yard at our beach place we used a engine-less mower and it took forever, even with a tiny yard. The blades likely needed sharpening.

A compromise might be an electric mower. No gasoline, no fumes, no loud noise, and its environmentally friendly! Nearly 3 hours to mow the lawn is nuts.

Mark :-)

Jeff said...

Electric might indeed be a reasonable compromise. Better yet, I think we should follow your lead and get a yard man! ;-)