Lawn Mowin' Muscles

We've been discussing lawnmowers for some time now. Debating the pros and cons of various kinds. We finally narrowed it down to an electric mower (my pick) or an old-fashioned push mower (Scoob's pick). I won. Heh.

Well, I was all excited when our lawnmower arrived by FedEx last Friday, then my sister asked me an interesting question. Has Scoob ever mowed a lawn before?

We tackled the lawn on Sunday. Turns out the answer was a resounding NO!

Let's overlook my stick-people drawing skills and say this is our lawn.

The black rectangle would be the house, the gray is the driveway and front walk, the black is the public road, and the green is, you guessed it, the lawn. There's a culvert (that they laid sod in!) by the public road, and two trees (in orange below) to mow around. And there's a gradual slope to the main lawn (arrow).


So here's the path Scoob started mowing with.

And that's about where I made him stop and took over to demonstrate how to mow a lawn. I tried very, very hard not to laugh. VERY hard. After I tried very, very hard not to get pissed when he dragged the electrical cord through my rose bushes! AAaarrgg! I'd rather let the deer have them than let them get destroyed that way!

Yeah, so here's my mowing path—mostly parallel lines, mostly moving away from the electrical outlet and cord.

And Scoob took over for the rest of the main lawn. All in all it took about 2½ hours. Scoob decided it's much more trouble than it's worth, but I appreciated the fact that I could actually SEE the result of our labor. I will say, the landscaper put in waaay more sod than we agreed on and when we have the time, energy, and money I want to change some of it out for flower beds.

Once I thought about it, I realized the last lawn I can recollect mowing was in Canyonville, OR (and it has been about 30 years since we lived there) compared to Scoob's never-in-my-life, so it was basically the blind leading the blind out there. But we got the job done. Mostly. We didn't mow the 2 little side yards.

Anyhow, my lawn-mowing muscles (pretty much my arse and my back between the shoulder blades) were sore Monday and Tuesday. We'll have to keep our lawn mowing muscles in shape.