One of the reasons we bought this house in the woods was the belief that the wooded nature of the lot meant lots of bare ground and only sparse patches of grass. That's how it looked when we did the deal last fall. At least that's how we thought it looked.
Recently, though, I've been alarmed to see the grass is thriving and growing like crazy. Yesterday was the second time I've mowed this spring. It was a pleasant 62 degrees and the air was dry, so it amounted to about an hour of useful exercise to follow our self-propelled mower around.
That's my kind of lawn mowing - a self-propelled walk-behind lawn mower. I've never owned a riding mower, never even operated one. I always thought you had to have a huge lot to justify the expense. Otherwise, it was just laziness and wasteful.
But I have a growing awareness lately that this 1.23-acre lot is the biggest chunk of real estate I've ever had to mow - more than twice the size of our lot in Thorntown, Ind. - and we're heading into some very warm weather.
The fact that our part of Arkansas runs about 10 degrees warmer than our Indiana home was delightful last winter, but the prospect of prolonged periods in the 90s and 100s makes a walk-behind lawn mower look like a torture device.
And it's not lost on me that the previous owner of our place had a riding mower in the garage when we got our first walk-through of the house. And our neighbors, all
of whom have comparable-sized lots, have riding mowers.So that's probably where our IRS rebate check will go when it shows up in the next few weeks. I've been eyeing and pricing riding mowers every time we go to the Home Depot or Lowe's for our other hardware, tool and lawn needs.
I recall seeing a booth for the Arkansas Lawn Mower Racing Association at a sports expo here earlier this year and noting that there is a member business just down the road here in Brookland.
Who knows? This riding mower thing could get completely out of hand...
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