Adventures with a Lawnmower

Yesterday’s mission was to cut the grass but after I pieced the lawnmower back together I realized the lawnmower oil was in the back of the truck – the truck that was with Jeff at work.

Today I had my lawnmower adventures instead. We were worried a little bit that the lawn would prove to be too large and that we’d need a riding mower, but it was totally manageable. I used close to two tanks, but it was fun enough.

The lawn had been cut before we moved it with a riding mower and it was long when they cut it so there was already lots of dead grass under the thick moist grass. That made it slow going but I also tried to get the mower much closer to the edges which meant I was probably cutting areas that hadn’t been cut this year so the lawn mower stopped and clogged up many times.

I saw a mouse. It was cute. It was beside the house and stood behind a leaf trying to hide from me. I saw a few toads too. The neatest thing was my discovery of salamanders! When I first saw something slither away from the mower I wasn’t sure what the heck it was. Just it’s black tail was sticking up out of the lawn and it was slithering back and forth like a fish! Turns out it was a little black salamander. I saw a couple more before I done. They were only 2 inches long or so. Black in colour. Even cuter than the mouse.

I’m pretty good at doing stupid things but I got a little lucky with today’s stupid move. After I burned through the first tank of gas, I knelt beside the push mower to fiddle with the spout of the gerry can. Or is it a jerry can. Whichever. When I crouched down, the side of my leg, just below my knee, pressed against the hot muffler of the mower!!! Now I say I was lucky for two reasons. Number one, I had fast enough reflexes to pull my leg away fast to stop the sizzling noise. And number two, I only hit the edge or something that was raised up on it because I only have two burn marks on my leg that aren’t too large. It doesn’t hurt, but they’ve blistered up really good. Jeff thinks they’ll hurt tomorrow.

So at any rate, my grass cutting mission was successfully completed. There is a ton of cut grass sitting on top of the lawn so we may need to rake tomorrow (tomorrow’s mission is to buy a wheelbarrow).

The previous owners had outlined many of the flower gardens with rocks. They aren’t really big rocks so they were hiding under the grass. I hit them a few times with the lawnmower. When Jeff came home from work, he fired up his gas trimmer and tried to trim around and edge the gardens. I really don’t like the rocks and we are thinking of picking them all up so we can just edge the gardens with a shovel and them just keep it trimmed well with the weedwacker/trimmer/edger thing.