Do you mow?

[Winchester]

It's that time again.....mowing the lawn is always one of my favorite chores around the house. We have a riding mower and a push mower. Before I boogered my knee up, I'd push-mow the yard by myself. It would take me two days to do the whole yard. About two hours on the front and one side, and then another two hours or so finishing up the other side and the back yard. We have a little over 1-1/3 acre (on a bit of a hill), so it took me awhile. Since the knee thing, though, I start by pushing around and under trees and flower beds and then using the riding mower to do the yard. Much faster this way...I can get the whole yard done in about three hours or so.

If the weather clears up (it's raining right now), we're getting the mowers out this afternoon and will get them ready to attack the grass. With all the rain we had last year, I think we mowed every week. Rick mowed quite a bit, too, last year, although he doesn't enjoy it quite as much as I do.

Do you mow your yard? How much land do you have? Push mower or riding mower? Do you enjoy mowing?

 

[kailie]

Nope, my uncle does all the mowing. My aunt & uncle own the property and they live in the other side of the duplex and he takes care of all of the maintenance. The back yard is bigger than the front yard, love it.

 

[gailc]

We have 5 acres and our property is shaped like a triangle.  About 2 acres of it doesn't get mowed except the right-of way.

We have a commercial zero turn mower-a Ferris that we bought a couple of years ago to replace our old zero turn mower.  We have a steep sloop that Neil mows.  With the ZTR no trimming around beds and trees (which we have many).  We do have a string trimmer that we use in certain places.  Our trees are all mulched out to the drip lines if not incorporated in flower beds.

I do not mow though as that machine is a tricky beast!  We haven't mowed yet might be 2-3 weeks yet depending on temps.

 

[luvmyparker]

Our yard is kinda small, so we have a push mower and I can honestly say, in my 28 years of life, I have NEVER mowed an entire lawn. Maybe pushed one a little bit here and there but that's about it.

 

[pushylady]

At 3 hours a pop it's a good thing you love mowing, Pam!
I do not enjoying mowing grass, although it's certainly not the worst job in the world. We don't have a huge amount to take care of, but it's awkward in three different sections so that takes a bit longer. It's clearing up all the rubbish that accumulates that really annoys me. We have a bus stop right at the front lawn and people seem to think it's acceptable to chuck their trash there just because they're getting off a bus, despite there being no bin there.
My ideal lawn would be one of those zero-scaping or whatever you call it ones that don't need a lot of mowing and watering.

 

[feralvr]

Great question because since this "spring" started over a month ago in Chicago... or should I say "summer", I have had to mow three times already. This is a first EVER to have to mow this early in the season. I LOVE to mow the lawn. 1 because it is great exercise- I have a push mower. 2 because I love the look of the lawn when it is freshly mowed

 

[calico2222]

DH does the mowing in our family. He takes care of our land and MIL's land (about 2 acres). I can do the front on the riding lawn mower but the back is a hill and I'm afraid I'm going to flip the tractor or get stuck or some other disaster. But he enjoys it so more power to him. He just gets his Ipod, fills a big bottle of iced tea or lemonade and is in his own little world.

The early spring has been great for him at work though. He's the John Deere manager at the local dealership and he has been slammed with new sales and maintenance. Hectic days for him but bigger commission checks for us! 

 

[catsallaround]

Used to at my moms but after I moved to apartment then to a house and husband takes care of it now.  Not much lawn at all but I get do to the walk before he mows-picking up cat and dog poop lol.

I understand the bus stop thing-we used to live one house over and then the northbound bus stop was across street and we got so many soda bottles and single serve chip bags.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

Nope! DH does it!  I used to HATE doing the yard at my Mom's!  It always took forever and we had birds dive bombing us!  I've never been a fan of being hot either...

We have 1/2 an acre and a riding mower.  DH does everything he can with the riding mower and then fills in with the weed wacker.  Our old push mower broke down about the time we bouth our house and the riding mower.  So convenient!

 

[arlyn]

Sand doesn't require much care, so no

 

[white cat lover]

I don't own a lawn mower yet (nowhere to store one safely & no money to buy one). First time I'll be in my own house w/ my own lawn to maintain. I hate mowing, though - so I'll have to either hire someone to do it or find someone who is willing to mow for me.

 

[sneakymom]

Our lawn takes maybe 45 mintues to mow.  I've done it, and dh does it.  It's not my favorite chore. 

So my question is, how long have you owned your lawnmower?  Ours is a Sears Craftsman, and it will be 20 years old in June.   

Most everything else in the house that we bought when we bought it 20 years ago have been replaced (except for the microwave)  and I'm just curious if we're using it on "borrowed time" 

Cheryl 

 

[trouts mom]

We have like 10 square feet of grass so...no not really but I guess we'll need a mower even though we have such little grass!

 

[nekochan]

Yep I do all the mowing. I hate doing it. We have a power push mower (electric) but it's old and the blades are dull, and a lot of our grass is really weeds (crabgrass etc) which are very tough so sometimes the mower gets clogged and I have to unplug it, turn it over and unclog it before I can continue. If I don't unclog it quickly enough sometimes it blows the power and then I have to go all the way down into the basement to flip the circuit.

Also all the blown-around trash and bottles and stuff from the block seems to end up in our front yard somehow. Maybe it's because we're in the center of the block or maybe because the crabgrass is rougher than a regular lawn so it holds the debris better?

Luckily our lawns are not that big since we live in the city, but it seems huge when I have to mow, I can't usually do both the front and back in one day because I'm too tired by the time I finish one.. The back lawn is the worst because I have to go around all the planting beds, one corner has tree roots I have to avoid and it's about twice the size of the front plus is more weedy. If I could I would just kill all the grass and replace it with ground cover or something that doesn't grow vertically! If I had the money I'd even do fake turf (there's a type called K9 Grass that's made for use with dogs!)

 

[-_aj_-]

My dad does it here, we dont have much grass though, doesnt even take 10 minutes to mow it

 

[rosiemac]

No l have a gardener 

I used to do it though, but then when my husband died l thought lifes too short so l decided to get someone to do it. 

It gets done every 2 weeks, and It's not very big, but his gives you an idea of my back garden but the conservatories hiding some of it, but my front lawn is smaller

 

[Winchester]

So my question is, how long have you owned your lawnmower?  Ours is a Sears Craftsman, and it will be 20 years old in June.   

Most everything else in the house that we bought when we bought it 20 years ago have been replaced (except for the microwave)  and I'm just curious if we're using it on "borrowed time" 

Cheryl 

Our first riding mower was a Craftsman and we had it for about 28 years or so. For the last 5 years, we really babied it to keep it running, but finally, we gave up on it. Bought a used John Deere riding mower from a guy in the neighborhood who is retired and makes a bit of a living from repairing mowers. (I think pretty much everbody in the neighborhood bought their most recent riding mower from that guy!)  The Craftsman was good to us and we can't complain about it at all. 28 years is pretty good. A friend of Rick's took it and is using it for parts for his Craftsman.

I'm hard on riding mowers. I think it was last year that we were putting hose around the seed rows in the garden. We have old hose that we put holes in and then place it throughout the garden. Then all we have to do is bring the hose up from the outside faucet, connect to the old hoses and we can water the garden that way; the water goes into the soil instead of evaporating into the air.

So I was mowing the yard and Rick was opening the pool. He bent over and....well, Rick has a really nice...ahem....butt. I was watching him instead of where I was going and rode right over the coiled hose that was outside of the fence (we hadn't gotten it into the garden yet). Cut the hose and wrapped it right around the mower blades. It was nasty. Rick was not amused in the slightest. I tried to tell him that it was really all his fault because he bent over....he didn't buy it. I also told him that he should feel really good that I still watched him; after all, we've been married over 40 years now. Didn't buy that either.

 The really bad thing about it? I had just been thinking that I had made it through most of the mowing that time without doing anything stupid! I didn't try to turn a corner too quickly and slam into a pine tree (yes, I did that one time. But in all honesty, that was kind of Rick's fault, too. He kept making fun of me because I drive the mower slower than he does. So I was in a higher gear, tried to turn the corner, and slammed into a huge pine tree. Didn't do any damage to the tree at all; the mower died though, and I had to restart it. Rick was not amused that time either)....I didn't slice any branches from anything....I was doing so well that time. And then he bent over and......

I do have a tendency to get too close to the shrubs and usually end up slicing through branches and such with the riding mower. We had a gorgeous Japanese maple tree that I was forever mowing off. We finally fenced it in and put orange flags around it, so I'd start paying attention to the tree. It's turned into a rather pretty maple "bush" and has gotten rather big....now that I've been staying away from it. Did it to a dogwood, too. I'm actually quite dangerous when it comes to the riding mower. Rick puts up with it, though, because he really hates mowing the lawn. And, believe it or not, I love mowing. Even with the push mower.

Your microwave is 20 years old? That's really good!  I think our Sharp Carousel lasted about 15 years.....but we get a lot of power surges and such. Even having our appliances on surge protectors doesn't really help them much. Our GE fridge, on the other hand, gave us well over 30 years of use. It finally died when we bought a new fridge.....we unplugged the GE, took it down to the basement, and plugged it back in. That was it for the fridge.

 

[sneakymom]

Actually the microwave is going to be 22 years old

  Got it as a wedding present. My next-door neighbor was impressed, he tried to give us a newer one but we said no- we've had really good luck with the one we have. 

Maybe the reason the lawnmower has lasted so long is that we have no hills.  And our yard isn't small, but it's not huge either. 

That's too funny how your ride-on lawmower got broken

  I can only hope that in another 20 years my dh's butt is still cute enough to watch

Cheryl

 

[momto3boys]

I LOVE mowing!

However we still have about 2 feet of snow so definately no mowing for us yet.

It takes us about 4-5 hrs or so. 2 hrs on the ride on and 2 and a little bit with the push. We use the ride on for most of the properity but need to use the push in and around all the trees, etc.

Sometimes if we do it together, it doesnt take us long, I'll use the ride on and Craig will do the push or vise versa.

It feels soooooo awesome once it's all mowed and the the yard is all cleaned up and it smells awesome, LOVE it!

 

[tarasgirl06]

No.  Very little now.  And yes, but my gardeners do that.