Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Lawnmower Regrets

When we arrived in the USA after living in Switzerland, we came to discover that our old (and cheap) lawnmower that had been in storage while we were overseas was no longer in working order. It was not worth repairing, and the pressure was on to find an alternate solution.

At the time, Kevin was commuting into Boston for work, and in addition to working long hours and traveling, he also had a long commute. We made the decision to contract a lawn service, thereby postponing the need to purchase another lawn mower.

When we moved to Ohio two years later, Kevin had had enough of paying for something he had always felt he should be doing himself. The time had come to purchase a lawn mower. Well, I seized the opportunity to make my opinion known about how much the fumes from lawnmowers around the world are contributing to the degradation of the ozone layer. Kevin humoured me and listened to my argument before taking to the internet to do some research. He graciously agreed to buy a battery powered, rechargeable lawnmower. No fumes. Yeah!

Kevin quickly learned to detest his new lawnmower. The lawnmower would be great...for a small, urban lawn that is cut religiously every week without fail, thereby not allowing the grass to get too long. Our lawn however, is none of those things. The battery would die, every time Kevin mowed the lawn, before he even came close to finishing the job. The mower would then take several hours to charge. The result was that we never had a fully mowed lawn...it was always in various stages of 'mowed-ness'.

Now that we have moved to Jersey, the problem has only gotten worse. Our property is bigger, and it has not stopped raining since we arrived. The grass is growing like crazy. We have been mowing the lawn for four days and we are still not done! One more charge of the mower should do it. The lawn is so long from the rain, and so wet that the battery dies much more quickly. By the time we finish mowing, it will be time to start over again!

I haven't cut the lawn in the whole 13 1/2 years we have been married. Well, Kevin has to work, and he isn't here enough to cut the grass everyday, so I have had to share the task of the lawn cutting.

Just what I wanted when I suggested buying a rechargeable mower........

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