Spring Has Obviously Sprung: The Ceremonial First Mowing of My Dirt

I'm not the kind of guy who embraces yard work. In fact, I avoid it at all costs. It takes no more than a glance at the moonscape that is my front yard to appreciate just how little effort I put into its maintenance and the total lack of pride I take in its appearance.

My front yard won't look any better than this as summer wears on.

Its utter ugliness, though, is as much a product of my shortage of discretionary cash as it is my lack of motivation. If I had the two or three grand to bring my grounds up to snuff, I'd be doing other things with it like remodeling the upstairs bathroom. The few dollars I have to invest in my property is better spent doing other things.

Wheeling out my mower every 10 days or so during warmer months is the one thing I just can't seem to escape. I really don't mind the 90 minutes or so I must waste each week beating back the few weeds able to survive in the dust bowl surrounding my house. But I'd just as soon hire someone else to do it. But, we're back to that discretionary-cash thing. 

It has become a regular feature of Clanging Bell to announce to readers the actual start of spring signaled by the ceremonial First Mowing of My Dirt! Yes that mushroom cloud of red dust filling Greenville's southern sky on Thursday was caused by my first 2014 mowing.

I spent about an hour on Wednesday putting a new blade on the mower, as well as changing the oil and swapping out the old air filter with a new one. After filling the tank with gas, I was shocked and pleased that the silly thing fired up with the initial pull of the starter rope.

Mentally and emotionally exhausted by my mower-maintenance episode, I pushed the contraption back into my shed, putting off the actual mowing for another day. That “another day” was Thursday.

I only had to perform a partial mowing. The weediest areas received the bulk of my attention. Then, of course, there is the unmowable area where the remains of a tree I paid to have cut down last fall litter the landscape as a painful reminder of why one should never pay a drive-by tree service before the job is 100% completed. 

Evidence you should never pay a drive-by tree service before they have completed the job.

On my list of things to do as the weather warms up is to rent a chainsaw and cut up these remaining logs into small enough pieces that the county will cart them away on bulk-trash-pick-up day. That, however, is fodder for a future blog posting.

In any event, you may celebrate the actual beginning of spring. The mowing has begun.