It’s the time of year again for one of the enduring rituals of spring and summer. No, I’m not talking about baseball. I am referring to lawn care. We spend hundreds, sometime thousands of dollars and spend countless hours each year establishing, maintaining and grooming our acre of sod. At the risk of sounding sexist, men are usually the ones who tend the turf, although that is certainly not always the case. Particularly with my next door neighbor, Sue. A retired Air Force Colonel, she spends most of her waking hours tending to her lawn and garden. And it shows, too. Her yard is absolutely beautiful, worthy of a spread in Southern Living, Country Gardens or Birds and Blooms.
People generally fall into one of three categories when it comes to lawn care. There are the ones that are obsessive, the ones that only do what they have to do, and the ones who simply do not do anything at all. The obsessive ones are the ones that cannot stand one weed in their yard. Growing up, a friend of mine’s Dad fell into this category. I would pull into their driveway and he would be down on his hands and knees, crawling about the yard pulling up weeds. That’s a little over the top. The easiest and most normal method is to apply the Weed & Feed, water it in and let time, Mother Nature and chemistry take care of the rest.
Then there are those who only do what they have to do. They might plant a little seed every now and then, but weeding and watering? Forget it. The weeds are great! They’re green. Mow ’em and they look like grass! Bare spots? So, what, I’ll run over them, kick up a dust storm and run off the mosquitos! Rocks? Run right over them too. Who knows, I might sling a few and take out a squirrel or three!
And finally, there are those who simply do not care. If they ever cut their grass at all, it’s because they finally have to, if they can even cut their grass. Eventually their yard gets to a point where Agent Orange couldn’t even kill all the vegetation. Who knows, after defoliation, they might even discover a couple of lawn mowers or a car that was pulled into the yard and forgotten six or seven years ago. If you are really lucky, someone like this lives right next door to you. Some, however, have money and some semblance of pride, and will at least hire a lawn service to perform the tasks of care and maintenance.
I fall somewhere in between Categories One and Two, leaning more toward Category One, but stopping short of crawling around on my hands and knees pulling weeds. I plant a new lawn every year, keep my grass cut, my hedges trimmed and my plants pruned. I always keep seed in the feeders for the birds. I even put ears of corn out for the squirrels. My driveway and walkways are swept clean. I pick up the limbs in my yard and keep the leaves at bay with my leaf blower.
Speaking of the leaf blower, that brings us to the heart of the subject of this week’s edition of Car Talk. You can’t do proper lawn care without the proper equipment. And, as I said earlier, men generally do the bulk of the turf work. So, you know what that means. We can’t just have a Murray push mower or an Ozark Trail leaf blower. We have to have the biggest and the best and, guys being guys, we may wind up with a hot rod like the one pictured here. My leaf blower is like a flame thrower. I’ve never used a flame thrower, but I’ll be willing to bet my leaf blower is just as much fun. It’s one of the back pack type, a Stihl BR500 with a 200 mph velocity that could blow all of The Three Little Pigs houses down, including the brick one.
How I came about owning this piece of gardening equipment is rather interesting. When I worked nights, especially on the weekend rotation, I would get home at around 8am Saturday morning and hit the sack. Of course, what happens on Saturday mornings all across America? Yard work, of course! Try to sleep with a 200 mph velocity leaf blower running right outside your bedroom window. I slept with ear plugs in my ears and a pillow over my head. I came to curse the man who invented the leaf blower, even stating as such on social media, which drew a backlash of negative comments. I went out and bought a Black and Decker lithium powered string trimmer at Lowe’s. The package also included a leaf blower with a velocity of about 7 mph. My neighbor Sue fell out laughing when she saw me using it. She called it my “Barbie” leaf blower. I limped through the season using it, all the time suffering the slings and arrows of ridicule, mostly from myself. On Christmas Morning, Jackie brought in a huge box with a bow and my name on it. I opened it, and there inside was the Stihl BR500 leaf blower with the 200 mph velocity. It was a great gift, and made clearing the yard of the fall leaves a much easier task. I refuse to be That Guy, however. I vowed never to use it before 10am and never, never before 1pm on Sundays. I still use my “Barbie” leaf blower, however, for touch up and the stairs. It is much less cumbersome climbing and cleaning stairs with a small hand held blower than with a 200 mph behemoth strapped on your back.
The lawnmower itself is the one piece of that lawn care hinges upon. Without a lawnmower, you simply cannot cut grass. I learned to use a lawnmower as a boy, like most of us. I used to mow my grandparent’s yard in East Atlanta with one of the old manual push type mowers. Mind you, theirs was a very small yard. At home, mowing the lawn was one of my weekly chores. I do not remember the brand, but we had a silver push mower my father bought at Ace Hardware in Gresham Park, and it lasted well over ten years. I could not wait to learn how to use it, and felt like a real grown up when I learned to gas it up, crank it and cut the grass all on my own.
And, guys love to work on lawnmowers, too. I have seen men pay twenty dollars at a yard sale for a junk lawnmower and take it home with a smile on their face. Somehow we just love the challenge of small gas engine repair. One year at the Christmas Parade in McDonough there was a group of guys in the parade on Snapper lawnmowers. These weren’t your average Snappers, either. They were painted red, orange, blue and hot rod yellow. Some had wheelie bars on them, and they all had loud, souped up motors. The ones with the wheelie bars would pop the front wheels up to almost a ninety degree angle and ride down the road on the two back wheels. Boys will be boys…
In the early Nineties I bought a Murray 85 push mower and used it for ten years. In the end, I had to take off the air filter and prime the carburetor to get it started. Eventually the magneto went south, so it would run for a while and conk out. I would have to wait about ten minutes for the engine to cool down, then crank it and continue. Sometimes I would have to prime the carburetor again to get it going. All this in the middle of July. Marie kept encouraging me to buy a new one, but no, I said, there’s no sense spending the money while this one is still running. Finally, one blazing hot Saturday I cut the back yard and the engine conked out just as I was finishing up. I still had the front yard to go. I pushed it up to the front porch where Marie was sitting having her toddy. As I came to a stop in front of her, one of the front wheels fell off. “Well, that ought to tell you something right there,” she said. I had to admit that life was finally over for the Murray 85.
When I got home from work on Monday, Marie was there with a young man from a local outdoor power equipment company. He was unloading a brand new John Deere L100 lawn tractor. I was speechless, thrilled and excited to climb aboard and go. I cut the front yard and then cut the back yard again for good measure.
That was fourteen years ago. Today, the old John Deere is still functioning, but I can see the end on the horizon. The seat is torn. Getting it started these days is kind of like preflighting an airplane. I first unplug my battery maintainer and close the hood. The start safety system had to be bypassed a few years ago, so to crank it now I have to turn the key to the on position and then use a toggle switch to turn the engine over. I then fire up the seven horse Briggs and, while the engine is warming up, pump up the rear tires, both of which have a slow leak. I then pull out of the basement and into the yard. The deck belt has a tendency to slip off when the engine cranks, so I pull into the yard and test the blades. If the belt has slipped off, I turn the engine off and climb under the mower. I loosen one of the pulleys, put the belt back into place and tighten the pulley. Then I fire the tractor back up, climb aboard and engage the blades. I set the deck level, put it in gear, let off the brake and ease out the clutch. Off to cut grass again… Still Cruisin’! –J.
Thanks Jimmy. I love a good lawnmower story. In fact, my grown son and I have had some of our best belly laughs over lawnmowers of the past. I’m a Category 2 guy. I don’t discriminate against weeds. If they’re green and kept cut, it all looks good. Before 1960 my yard was a farm. So I’ve never had to use fertilizer. And I refuse to plant work. Fortunately I have a wife that uses cutting grass as a replacement for the gym and the tanning salon. Gotta love her.