Earlier in the season I bought a reel mower for cutting the grass, which is mostly weeds, in my yard. I was cutting it early on Sunday morning and I did not have to be concerned about waking up my neighbors, since the only sound it makes is the turning of the cutting blade. I wanted to get it done because rain was predicted later in the day. It was a lovely morning and for an hour or so, the only other sound was the singing of the songbirds. The quiet was soon disrupted when a neighbor across the street started his gas powered mower.
I continued my slow trek back and forth across the yard, stopping occasionally to clip those areas that the mower could not reach, with grass shears. This is how yards used to be cared for before the invention of power mowers and string trimmers. A little while later, the neighbor walked over to me and this is how the conversation went:
“Would you like to borrow my push mower?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. (I am pretty sure that my reel mower was a push mower since pushing it was what I was doing.)
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I am positive,” I replied, adding “I like to listen to the birds.”
“Well, you’re a lot tougher than I am,” he said. (He was at least twice my size and most likely half my age.)
Noisy, gas powered push mowers have given way to riding lawn mowers. Those with sizable yards, have riding lawn mowers, I suppose because they don’t want to do anything that even vaguely resembles actual work. A yard can be cut in a fraction of the time it would take with a push mower, leaving them more time to drink beer and watch television. Men (and women) feel powerful sitting atop their riding lawn mowers, in the same way that having a big pickup truck gives them a sense of power. They can sit on them and drink a large glass of sweet tea and smoke cigarettes, while the powerful machine beneath them does all the work. Some of the commercial riding mowers even have air conditioning inside an enclosed cab. The drivers generally need to wear ear plugs to drown out the deafening noise. When the mowing is done, they take up their gas powered string trimmers to “weed eat” around shrubs, trees, and edges that the mower missed. These often require wearing goggles to prevent dangerous things flying up into their eyes.
A short time later that morning, I looked across the street and saw that the neighbor had strapped on his bottle of herbicide. He was judiciously spraying the weeds around his yard that he had just mowed. This is what I am surrounded by and what is typical in most neighborhoods. I cannot change the mindset of people who are completely ignorant about the damage they are causing to our planet. All I can do is continue taking care of my yard in a sustainable way, to continue creating habitat for the birds and insects, and hope that one day a few will take notice of the example I am setting.
