GRIZ BEAR COMMENTS: There must be a good reason not to mow

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Well, I finally got it done again, though it's not what I really wanted to do over the weekend. I thought of a thousand reasons to put it off a little longer but knew waiting would only make the job that much worse.

I had already delayed the work for days because every time I had opportunity to mow, it rained - and you can only guess how disappointed I was when the weather kept me from my “favorite” summer pastime!

There was the fact, too, that my daughter seems to think the gas can is for her to empty into the fuel tank of her car when she waits too long to stop at the station or has spent all of her money on other things. And, am I not excused from mowing if I go out to start up the mower and there's no gasoline? Why make a special trip to the station for just a gallon or two of fuel when I can wait and buy gas for my truck and the mower all in the same trip!

Perhaps it’s the fact that I have to use a push mower while most of my neighbors are out there on their lawn tractors and done already before I've even finished a small part of our yard. What was I thinking when I traded off our lawn tractor so I'd get more exercise when I mowed the yard! Now, I'd like to trade in my push mower for a John Deere tractor with a 16-foot mowing deck. Then I could be done in three or four passes at the most!

Being somewhat of a naturalist, I considered putting up a sign in my yard designating it as wildlife habitat, but I'm not sure if the code enforcement officer would allow the designation.

The wildlife might have loved it. There would be cover for smaller animals and more grass for large grazing animals like deer.Yet, it's precisely the fact that some wildlife may have appreciated grass a foot or two tall that made it clear I'd have to fire up the old push mower and cut things back a bit. You see, Mrs. Griz doesn't like wild surprises. The thought of small rodents, or the snakes that like to eat those small creatures, in our back yard just wouldn't make her very happy at all.

I did hate to cut off all those beautiful wildflowers which were blooming almost everywhere in my yard. Now that the purple henbit and dead nettle are gone, there have been a variety of yellow and blue flowers growing there. It seemed a shame to mow them down before I even identified them. Who knows, I may have destroyed some rare species of plant native to the prairies and woodlands of northwest Arkansas but now almost extinct!

It was hot and steamy over the weekend and I thought of putting off mowing just a little longer - at least until the next cold spell when a fellow can mow without working up a sweat. But, with the grass starting to reach the point where I'd have to buy a bigger mower to cut it, and with the promise of more rain on the way, I started the mower and got to work.

For a while, I was wishing the rain would arrive early and cool me down, but it held off until I was quite well done.

I wondered, too, as I walked back and forth, why it is we have a yard. Mrs. Griz seems to like one even though I've pointed out that the only ones who really use it are the dog, for its personal business, and me, for summertime exercise.

While mowing around all the trees in the wooded part of the back yard, I could have voiced my thoughts about lawn mowing in greater detail and Mrs. Griz would have never heard me. I was reminded of a saying I recently read on a man's T-shirt: "If a man is alone in the woods and there is no woman there to hear what he says, is he still wrong?" My guess is: "Probably so!"

There was a little more to my lawn job than just mowing. Before I got to the trimming of the weeds in those hard-to-reach spots, there was something else Mrs. Griz suggested I cut - it seems an ash tree in the back yard gave up the ghost and Mrs. Griz thought the trunk would make a good base for a bird bath.

Yes, I felled the tree and it missed both me and the house, which I figured was a good thing, but it did mean I'd have to cut up the fallen ash before the yard work was considered complete. That got harder when the chain jumped the track and the saw wouldn't finish the job - ah, a break! I'd hate to get all my exercise over in one day; and besides, it was getting too dark to cut logs or trim weeds.

And wouldn't you know it? There were no more rain delays. The sun was shining again on the afternoon of the morrow, so the rest of the logs got cut and the weeds trimmed. Mrs. Griz even got her bird bath mounted on the tree stump before the storms.

And then the rains came. Guess that means the grass will grow and, though I'll put it off as long as I can, I'll soon have to get my exercise again chasing after that push mower. It kind of makes me wonder why I bothered to clean up that old machine, change a cracked fuel line and get the thing running well again. Guess if I thought it would get me out of mowing for the summer, I'd have let the gasoline continue to leak until the thing went out in a blaze of glory!

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Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Westside Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by email at [email protected].

Opinion, Pages 6 on 05/22/2013