Lessons learned from mowing the yard.

This year's odd weather - all the rain, no excessively hot stretches - has not only made for an unusual summer, but for good conditions for having the lawn grow. And that, of course, leads to spending a lot of time mowing the lawn. My yard is big enough that it takes about 3 hours to mow it all, and I've had to mow it about every week through the end of June and every week and a half since. Huge difference from last year, when my yard was mowed once during the last six months of the year.

So that's been a lot of time trudging along behind the lawn mower; a lot of time to think. A lot of time to reach some conclusions:

Mowing the back yard isn't as important as mowing the front yard. Keeping the front yard relatively neat makes the neighbors content, but virturally no one sees the back yard, so it has less impact on my neighbors. Mowing the back yard two-thirds as often as the front yard, or even every other time I mow the front yard, works out pretty well. Mowing the back yard every third time I mow the front doesn't work out quite so well: the grass (and weeks) grow sufficiently high that it takes a lot longer to get through it all. Back to every-other-time-I-do-the-front-yard, I guess.

I should have gotten the riding mower, like the previous owner had. With the self-propelled mower that I do have, I can do either the front yard and maybe 10 percent of the back yard or the rest of the back yard before my patience and energy run out. With a riding mower, I could probably do the whole yard in the time it now takes me to do half the yard. Plus, it'd be cool.

On the other hand, mowing the lawn as often as I do makes it so I get to know the neighborhood wildlife a bit better. I've mentioned the neighborhood bunny rabbit a couple of times; there are also squirrels, chipmunks, and the occasional possum. So today, I was out doing the back yard, cutting down the last of the foot-high grass and weeds. I noticed that the mower seemed to throw a stick out sideways (as it sometimes does). Oddly, though, this stick didn't go in a straight line: it went in sinuous curves, and stopped about two feet away from me. Oh, wait a sec. That's not a stick looking up at me. It's a SNAKE! I simultaneously shoved the mower forward a yard and leaped backwards two, happily noting that the mower's automatic cutoff switch does, in fact, work, not that I was mowing uphill at the time. We stared at each other for a moment, as my breathing and heartbeat came back to normal. He stayed still, hoping that if I thought he really was just a stick, I'd leave him alone. I decided on a policy of live-and-let-live. Well, live-and-let-live-in-somebody-else's-yard, to be precise. So I stomped my foot in his general direction, and he hightailed it (presuming that's an appropriate action for a snake) to the fence. And that led to yet another conclusion: Cut the grass before it gets tall enough for snakes to hide in.