Cutting Remarks

There are times when the thrill of mowing the lawn isn't quite as great as others.

It normally takes me three days to mow the entire thing. That's mostly because the electric mower has about a forty-five minute charge, and it takes about five hours to reload it. Forty-five minutes will get me the front lawn and about half of the grass to the right of the house, or all of the right and about half the back, or about half the back and all of the left. Even if the mower was good for longer, I'm really not; after about an hour, I'm spending more time looking at what I've cut than doing cutting.

The mower says that it's a mulching mower, and should chop the grass finely. Well, that's what it says. When the grass is growing vigorously, like now, it seems to chop about two thirds of it, leaving twin trails of grass as I make a pass. I really don't like those, but I don't dislike them enough to rake it all up. Should we get a riding mower, we'll need to decide if we want a mulching one (which might have the same problem, but be less of a pain to go back and re-cut) or one that has huge grass-catching-bins on the back.

I wouldn't mind having one of those clean, neat swathes of grass.... but I'm not willing to put time and effort, not to mention money and chemicals, into it.