Pluggers by Rick McKee for July 06, 2022

Dad at one time worked at a nursery. He brought home one of those mowers once. Those things ain’t fun trying to cut the grass.

Me bearly talks. Growl!

If he is using that kind of mower, it is surprising that he is that big ! ! ! !

Sometimes people are ‘big’ because of other reasons – some even medical – not alway just from being a lazy glutton!

And then they say, “Huh? What’d you say?”

If it’s green and it ain’t poison ivy, what’s the problem?

Yes I have done that !

Not so much self conversation but we DO mow the clover heads and dandelions down… looks great : )

I talk to myself: I’m the only one who will listen. I answer myself: I’m the only one intelligent enough to understand the situation.

When the nights get long and I can’t sleep, I always start a “good” conversation with me…and before I can think ‘boy, this guy is so #÷×$€& boring, man!’, I fall asl….ZZZZ!

There are many in my neighborhood who have surrendered to the Moss. It’s green and you don’t have to cut it.

To quote Gandalf (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)“I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to.”J.R.R. Tolkien

Why do we have to have lawns? In addition to requiring a lot of care (weed control, pesticides, fertilizer, mowing) to maintain, they require a lot of fresh water. Something we are running out of. Xeriscaping (the term coined by Denver Water in 1981) can reduce water usage and maintenance, improve biodiversity, lower pollution, as well as mitigate heat within urban areas. It uses native/indigenous vegetation instead of store-bought grass and imported plants to retain water and minimize supplemental irrigation and they don’t usually require fertilizer or pesticides. It takes a bit of effort and up-front cost to get started, but it ends up being fairly easy (and inexpensive) to maintain [we use river rock and some mulch to keep weeds down and only have to replace the mulch every couple of years]. No lawn mower required.

Talking to yourself isn’t an issue, even if done out loud. It’s when, in that out loud conversation, one side says “Go to He!!” or “You’re full of sh!t” that there could be a problem.

Does anybody here remember the Monta Mower? My parents got one right after Daddy got out of the Navy. I wonder what ever happened to it.

No herbicides! “To the seventh generation.”

Frequent mowing results in forced local evolution with shorter grasses preferred over taller, weedy types. It’s the only good reason for mowing a lawn.

Just got mine cut yesterday, looks great! (for a day)

I have the dog within hearing distance so it looks like I’m talking to her.

But those weeds will grow back quickly in the summer.

The greenest and most economical way to kill weeds is, mow them weekly.

This is my philosophy, too!

After husband quit his job we started mowing – mostly our backyard as our driveway takes up most of the front of our house instead of paying someone to do so – mostly because he disappeared never to be seen or heard from again.

We did enough of a job until 2020. Since we stayed in the house except for taking in mail from box at front door, buying groceries every 2 months and picking up prescriptions every 3 months – we did not go in the backyard and it slipped our minds that it was there. One late in summer we needed to go into our garage and it is entered in the backyard – WHAT A MESS! With my logic we left it to all die in the winter and we would deal with it the next spring.

Next spring (2021) forgot again until it was too late and we agreed that we would hire someone this year to deal with cleaning up the backyard – which does have poison ivy – and then mow, etc for us. Slightly late in terms of when they start mowing we hired the company which does our two neighbors to our north to deal with it for us. (The neighbor to our south uses someone we used decades ago and were not happy with.)

We are hoping that since he lists commercial and residential snow clearing (anyone we have called over the past 15 years since our former gardener disappeared says “commercial only!”) we are hoping he will solve the snow problem for us also.