by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
This is the eighth summer that I have lived at my little home on the big acreage in southern Missouri. Normally I begin mowing in mid-April, a process that takes a pair of three-hour sessions on the mower every two weeks, and I mow fourteen or fifteen times across the spring, summer, and fall until the grass finally stops growing for the year. Usually I mow up into November.
This year has been different. The last time my happy butt was on the Dixie Chopper mower (with the 54-inch cut and the zero-turning radius) was on June 19th. There was a drought just setting in when I did that mowing, and I realized that I was about to be free of the mower for a few extra weeks until the grass once again started growing. The drought turned out to be horrible, and as of today it has been 48 days since that last mowing. Now, thanks to a couple of recent downpours, I am about ready to resume mowing. It looks like that will happen this Monday - Day 50! That will mean that I will have saved three complete mowing cycles - or about seventy-five dollars in gas and eighteen hours of hard labor!
Of course during that mowing hiatus I have carried gallons and gallons of water to the outdoor plants and struggled to keep them alive in the oppressive heat, so there was no actual savings on labor - and probably a net loss.
But summer is about over, all of the flowers and veggies that I planted in the spring are still alive - and the grass is suddenly green again! The worst has passed and the cool breezes of fall are not far off.
The outdoor plants, and yard, and Pa Rock have all met another challenge and survived - and on Monday, or thereabouts, I will once more be singing, "Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to mow I go!"
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