One of the advantages of living in our neighborhood is that Talboom Lawncare mows our grass — or at least a majority of mine.
I have mentioned this before but our small backyard climbs up from our deck at an almost 45-degree angle. It proved to be a real challenge for the guys on their big riding mowers. They had a hard time not scalding it and one of them even fell off and rolled down the hill. Fortunately, the mower stayed put.
The rumor around the work crew was that this particular mower may have fallen asleep in the saddle after a rough night of some kind. I will not judge.
They even have a name for our back yard — The Toilet Bowl. The hill at the top of our property does sort of curve around, giving it a bowl-like shape. Works for me.
The hill can be a little disorienting. If you walk out onto our deck without prior notice, it looks as if a giant green wave is about to crash onto you.
Back to the mowers. I worried about their well-being while maneuvering on The Toilet Bowl so I decided that I would take over the grass cutting back there. This is pretty unprecedented in our neighborhood for residents to be doing their own yard work. It’s almost — but not quite — against the by-laws.
But Kevin of Talboom said if I wanted to take on that chore, more power to me. The thing is that I’m not using any power, except from my own stringy muscles. I bought a reel mower — with the spinning blades and, yes, no motor.
You don’t see many reel mowers anymore, probably because there is some physical exertion involved. But there are advantages, too. It’s quiet except for the singing of the blades … it’s good for the air with no gas emissions … it doesn’t break down … and it gives you an excuse not to go to the gym.
When I first bought it four years ago, I would show off a little to the neighbors by pushing it straight up the hill and then running back down it. But that got old pretty quickly. Now, I mainly mow across the hill instead of up-and-down.
I call my mower Clementine because of its orange color. I don’t go as far as calling it “My Darling Clementine,” both the name of an old folk song and an 1946 Western with Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp and Victor Mature as Doc Holliday.
When I push Clementine out of the garage, I still get weird looks. Some drivers-by don’t even want to make eye contact with me. I understand. To some of them, I might as well be hauling out something as archaic as a one-horse plow or a butter churn.
I do have my supporters, though. When our neighbor Joan’s grandkids came up from their Louisiana home for the month of July, they thought Clementine (but not so much me) was pretty darn cool. The three boys — Daulton, Declan and Damien — fought for turns pushing it across my front yard.
At one point, I thought I was going to have to separate 3-year-old Damian from 6-year-old Declan. It may be the first time in recorded history that a temper tantrum was caused by not getting a turn with a reel mower.
The grass was pretty high and it took some real and reel boypower for them to push it more than a few feet at a time. But they loved to do it. I guess all kids don’t need video games to be entertained.
The three D’s are pretty cool boys (and so are their two sisters) and I was sorry to see them head back to Louisiana and their parents’ big farm. We really don’t have any kids in our neighborhood for me to impress.
But the other day, Joan gave me an update on her Louisiana grandchildren and showed me a picture of Declan — get this — mowing his parents’ yard with a reel mower that he had begged his parents for.
“It was over 100 degrees on the day he was mowing and Angela (Declan’s mother) was afraid that somebody might turn her in for child abuse,” Joan laughed.
Because of the heat, she only allowed Declan to mow for a certain amount of time each session. It took him three days but he finally finished mowing an entire acre of grass.
He is my kind of kid. Next summer, he will be seven and I figure I’ll let him have a go at Clementine and the Toilet Bowl. I just don’t want him to engage in a knock down-drag out fight with his younger brother for the honor.
Contact Bill at [email protected]