Yesterday another step on the long road to domesticity. Brace yourself for a shock.
 My friends will think it’s trick photography: me mowing the grass. |
Are you sufficiently braced? Okay.
I did gardening.
After a few subtle hints of the "Hey Daniel, did you mow the lawn yet?" type recently from various people, I finally decided I could no longer ignore how long the grass was getting. It’s now two months since I moved in here, and I’ve come to the conclusion that constantly growing grass is not a problem that will simply go away if left unattended. Eventually – and I admit that perhaps this would be a long way off – the grass would be so overgrown that it would be impossible to get from the street to the front door without a machete.
So, what was the solution? Well to draw a bad analogy with transport, I had three choices.
- I could hire someone to do it. Analogous to hiring a taxi. Requires no effort on my part, apart from the handing over of moderate amounts of cash every time. Burns fossil fuels. I’m not super keen on fossil fuels, really.
- I could go and buy a super dooper revved-up motor mower. Analogous to buying a car. Requires some effort, but a big bunch of money for the initial purchase, fuel and maintenance. And trust me, I know all about engine maintenance – or at least paying for it. Also burns fossil fuels and is quite capable of drowning out the local birdsong.
- Or I could go for the green option, and buy a rotary hand-pushed mower. I used to use one when I was a kid, and to my delight they still make these beasts. I suspect the design hasn’t changed in about 100 years. Analogous to a bicycle. Cheap, low maintenance, burns no fuel, but involves a lot of physical effort to get the job done.
Okay so it was a weak analogy, but what the hell. After wandering aroundBunnings this morning, the kids and I came home with a
basic rotary mower, a rake, and a pair of shears. I was ready for action.
I put the mower together, slipped on the Blunnies, then spent a couple of hours mowing, raking, and shearing in the sunshine. I did the back garden (a minor forest had developed near the back fence), front garden, and not forgetting the nature strip. It was bloody hard work, and while the garden doesn’t exactly look perfect (Peter Cundall I ain’t – I can’t even do the accent), and while I was completely and utterly stuffed afterwards, it all looked heaps better.
