What is lost, what is gained

Garter snakes eat many garden pests, such as slugs!

Jumping off my recent post regarding the way life has changed since the ubiquity of the internet (thanks to smartphones and wifi), I found myself meditating the other day on what is gained versus lost with all sorts of technologies. The one close at hand is the lawn mower.

Mowing the lawn always seemed a rather thankless task growing up, and in my adult life too. Run a machine to manicure your perfect yard and cough for an hour afterwards thanks to the exhaust fumes and hayfever. And to what end? Just to have a short, even lawn. Perhaps someone who knows more about the specifics of grass growing (or who cares more about it) could explain to me that this is actually important for anything beyond vanity. But it seems a bit vain to me.

In our current (temporary) home we've made a decision. Not because of my dislike of lawn mowing, but more due to spatial constraints and the fact that we don't want to purchase a machine that could be different from what we'd need in our future home. The lawn here is relatively small, so we bought a hand tool known as a "weed whip". Not to be confused with the weed whacker, the weed whip consists of a medium-length wooden handle with a serrated, two-edged blade at the bottom. It's a tool that Jack uses at work sometimes for brushing the trail corridor. It's remarkably effective at cutting things down to size. It just requires a bit more manual labor.

So as you can imagine, our yard looks a lot scruffier than those of our neighbors. And frankly, we like it that way. A scruffy lawn seems more inviting, more lush and semi-wild. More like a meadow. As P. Allen Smith said one time (I think it was him?) "Children love meadows." And I am a child at heart.

For a motorized walking or riding lawn mower, what is lost is the direct connection to the land, the manual labor (though some walk-behinds do require a bit more effort, but it's often more of just a leg workout, which is just like any other workout I tend to do), and the peace and quiet (and clean air, if it's a gas mower) for yourself and those around you. What is gained is time, especially if the lawn is large.

Time is what is lost with a weed whip. Although I have gotten good enough to get through the front lawn in 30 minutes now (I did it on my lunch break yesterday), that's compared to the 47+/- minutes it took me to do about 5x (or more?) that space with a walking mower at our Crescent City house. (I used to listen to the entirety of Pearl Jam's "Lightning Bolt" album while I mowed.) What's gained is pretty significant, though: peace and quiet for yourself and your neighbors (just a gentle swish-swish-thwack-thwack sound), cleaner air, a solid upper body workout, and a greater connection to the land that you're working. What do I mean by that last part? I mean that I know exactly what plants are growing and where in my little lawn because I recognize and trim them with my "eye on the ball" and so much more focus on the plants themselves than when I run a mower over them. Also, since I tend to strike higher than a mower and with less frequency/speed, I'm less likely to injure wildlife going about its business in our lawn. Wildlife like the beautiful garter snake in the photograph above. I've seen that beauty while "whacking" (as I like to call it, because "whipping" sounds weird) the lawn twice now!

For anyone who's wondering: what about a non-motorized, old-fashioned, walk-behind mower? The modern ones are full of plastic parts and we had one in Crescent City - it ceased to function effectively within a year. If I found a proper vintage one for a good price, I'd buy it and try it again, but I'm not impressed with the ones on the modern market. Not for these thick, lush, PNW lawns, anyway. On that same note, I'm certainly not opposed to the non-gas motorized options that are out there as well, and I may well look into them before the summer is over, perhaps an electric weedwhacker as a nice midway option.

If it's not obvious, I hope you recognize that I view this as a "right tool for the job" situation. And it's more along the lines of consciously deciding what technology we utilize in our lives and accepting the gains and losses that the type of technology we use affords. For this house at this time, something small with more of an upper body workout works well for me. This is akin to that question I've been trying to ask myself more lately: is this trip better suited to walking, cycling, or driving?

Until next time!