Pride in mowing less important as I grow older

In the last week I’ve turned down a couple of offers to mow my lawn. By the time I finally got through the mowing late last week I was wondering if I’d made the right choice.

For a few years I had made the choice to hire a lawn service that mowed as needed, usually about every other week. I got spoiled but, the owner last year called and dropped me, saying he couldn’t get help during the pandemic and didn’t want that responsibility.

I made the decision to go back to mowing myself despite a bad back. I had noticed that I could push a grocery cart all over the store, but couldn’t walk across it without the thing. The same seemed to apply to pushing a mower. I go slower than I did a few years ago, but I’m getting exercise.

Part way through last year I became aware of a student who needed money so I put him to work using my mower. No good deed goes unpunished. You guessed it, he hit something and soon my mower that started on no more than a couple of pulls was taking multiple pulls and wouldn’t stay running.

I found a good used mower and got back to it myself and finished out the season. It wasn’t much of a mowing season last year; it didn’t rain much and I couldn’t afford a lot of water.

This year the tide is turning. After the rain quit and the weather got hot my lawn got ahead of me.

Granted, we’ve had so many years of drought and watering restrictions that the lawn is in pretty sad shape. Four or 5 inches of rain can turn that around if you get rid of the weeds and fertilize. Hopefully this is the year we get things back in shape.

Growing up, the brother and I shared lawn-mowing duties. I’m sure he’ll tell you he did it more often and the way I remember it I did. We never had real good, fancy or wide-cut mowers then and it was a lot of work and frustration, especially if you procrastinated and had to mow tall weeds with an underpowered mower.

Dad could have found a better mower, but maybe he figured the more time we spent pushing the mower the less trouble we were causing. In fact a better mower, a riding mower, did show up as soon as we were unavailable to mow. My sister might claim she mowed, but it was probably on a riding mower.

I only hired out to mow others lawns when I was desperate for cash or coerced by my mother to mow for an ailing neighbor.

I’ve mostly done my own mowing since moving out. I’ve never used a riding mower. The older I get the less important it is to me to be able to make that proclamation. A really wet year could break me.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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