Dad and Lawn Care, Both at Their Finest!

As the weather warms and all of nature comes back to life from Winter, we all seem to get a little bit more of a spring in our step.  And whether its planting flowers, fertilizing the yard, seeding the garden or the creme-da-la-creme of mowing your lawn when it is in its finest form, most of us seem to spend infinitely more time outside in our yards.  Visiting with neighbors, throwing some steaks on the grill, or taking in the sunshine ... it doesn't really matter.  We all love basking in the glory and grandeur of our yards.

At least most of us do.  We all have "that neighbor" that believes his yard is a hay field, dealt best organically with those beautiful small yellow flowers (dandelions, creeping charlie) and the one who chooses to do as little to his/her yard as possible.  Thrives on harvested it only one or two times per year.  But other than "that neighbor" ... most of us like our yards to look nice.

So it goes without saying that some of us participate more robustly in our lawn care than others.  Yep, well our Dad rests at the peak of this hierarchy.

He's CRAZY about his yard.  If it's too long he's not happy.  If it's too short (you have the blade way too low) he's not happy.  If it's not getting enough rain he's not happy.  And if it's rainy and too wet, it's too long and too wet and he's not happy.  You get the point.

And as the son who inherited the "yard gene" as much as any of us, I appreciate and admire this trait in  my Dad.

But sometimes he just goes too far ...  case in point upcoming.

I spoke to Dad last night.  He said he was tired from a long and productive day.  I'll spare you all the details and just say that Mom and Dad found themselves at home by themselves at 3pm on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  And Dad decided to mulch the tomato's in the garden which requires some grass clippings.  Uh oh.

Now Dad wasn't about to damage the beauty of his recently mowed lawn just for some mulch for his tomatoes.  But he did need some grass clippings.  And he wasn't about to get weeds from a neighbor's lawn caked under his mowing deck just to get some long clippings by mowing the neighbors yard.

So what's the next best thing?  Mow his yard with a push mower that bags even though he mowed it the day before yesterday.  Yep, that's right.  And do you know how much of his yard he had to mow with the push mower/bagger in order to get the desired amount of clippings?  Consider first that he was probably cutting about 1/32 of an inch from each blade of grass and the answer is ... his whole damn yard!  Yep, all 2.3 acres of it.  With the push mower/bagger, on a glorious Sunday afternoon.  Hmmmm, and he was tired, but he was happy!  And proudly announced to me at 8pm that evening that not only had he gotten his tomatoes mulched with grass, but also mowed/bagged his whole lawn in the process!

I'm a believer that I'm a "chip off the old block" when it comes to this element of Dad's character and interest.  But I'm going to take a lesson from this and learn from his example.  Drop the blade a notch? Good idea.  Drop it three notches and mow the alley in the back for 30 feet?  Even better.  Brad jumped all over that solution.  But not Dad.  He's going to go about it the painstaking way that preserves his turf.  All 2.3 acres of it.

Now that's what I call a love of lawn care, gardens and the great outdoors!