Picture the scene: Saturday, a sunny day in springtime. Birds singing, children laughing and playing. Me, swearing and sweating, pushing as hard as I can, and yet not budging.
Okay, let's back up. My husband is away on a two-week business trip, and I had already begun to lose my mind, since I had been taking care of my two-year-old all by myself. The oddly sunny weather also inspired me with some weird form of spring fever, causing me to forget that I have never yet, in the nearly three years we've lived in our house, mowed the lawn, or done more outside than eat strawberries and pull approximately six small weeds.
Whenever Jeremy mows our lawn, he uses one of our two free, gas-hog mowers, of which I both disapprove and am afraid. One leaks gasoline all over; the other stops frequently--and I vaguely suspect they will spontaneously blow up if I try to start them. I also know they are about as ecologically unsound as you can get--particularly the one that spills a gallon of gas for each gallon it uses. So I figure, I'll just borrow my neighbor Adam's reel mower! How delightfully simple and "green"! I call my neighbors immediately, and left a message.
The next morning, Saturday, Adam's wife Julia calls, and sounded a little skeptical, but says I am certainly free to borrow their mower. Adam leaves it in our yard, and it sits there waiting for me when I go outside later. It does seem larger than it had when I saw it across the street.
After about one minute of shoving as hard as I could, I yell across the street, feeling stupid, "Adam, am I doing this right? I can't make it move!" He comes over and eyeballs my lawn. "Your grass is...really long," he says. "It might be a little...hard. You'll kind of have to get a running start." Then he grabs the mower and briskly mows a small patch. Okay, so this might be harder than I thought, I think, but at least I don't have to go to the gym.
I start pulling the mower back, and then rushing forward, pushing as hard as I can and BAM! Mow about two inches of grass. I pull it back several feet again, and then shove it forward, and BAM! Another two inches. After I succeed in mowing about two feet of grass, and am perspiring heavily, I go to get my gardening gloves; my hands are blistering. Another two feet, and I have to stop for a drink. I am aware my honor is at stake; Chuck and Adam, my two neighbors, have already seen me making a jerk of myself and I deeply suspect they are mocking me. A third neighbor of whom I am not overly fond, also walks by, commenting, "Heh! That's old-school, man! Heh!"
After about an hour, I have mowed an area of approximately three feet by nine feet in the corner of our lawn. Though close to the brink of heat exhaustion, I absolutely refuse to give up--it is to be me or the F#$%$ lawn!
Twenty minutes and four inches later, my salvation arrives. My neighbor Chuck comes charging across the street, carrying his giant gas mower, exclaiming, "I just can't stand it anymore!!" In about ten minutes, he whizzes across the lawn, expertly cutting the grass while I stand around staring awkwardly, trying to figure out what to do with myself. It doesn't seem quite polite to leave, but there is little for me to do. Next he comes over with his edges, and cleans up the edges as well. To add insult to injury, he manages to remow the section I had worked so hard to butcher, and shaves it down another inch or so.
Anyway, I tried to do the environmentally sound, healthy thing. I tried to be green. And I failed. I bought Chuck a beer, for the lawn surely would have done me in in the end.
P.S. If you want to mow your lawn using a push mower, do know enough about gardening to know when your lawn has gotten far, far too long. And maybe hire a gardener.