I hate how hot it is outside. I hate that my husband has to do it when he could be spending time with the kids. I hate doing it myself. I hate the bugs. I hate mowing down the plants that are good for pollinators.
I enjoy it for about 5 minutes and feel proud and accomplished. Then I’m quickly ready to be done with it.
And after all that, we have to do it again a week or two later.
I don’t like it, but I did get a riding mower last year. But of course there are some places the rider can’t go. Which means I then either need to get out the push mower or go crazy with the weedeater. I live on a corner and have a stop sign post, a street sign post, a fire hydrant and a water main valve. They are all near each other, so that whole corner can’t be got with the rider. Plus I have 7 trees to go around in circles, and then still have to weed eat.
I really hate weed eating more than mowing. And the rider is far better than the push mower, especially when it’s 90+ outside. But I really wish the grass and weeds would stop growing so fast.
@brennyn my husband tried that years ago with one area on the yard. Now I have to weed eat it and spray it regularly. It had been lined before we put the rock on too, but that doesn’t stop the weeds around here.
@spacemart Or stop trying to force monoculture of grasses that are not supposed to be green all year and 2 inches tall.
Grass is a prairie plant. It isn’t supposed to suck up water all year because it doesn’t rain all year in the prairie. It is supposed to go dormant and look like it is dead most of the year.
And we need to stop trying to do dumb shit like grow acres of lush green grass in the middle of the fucking desert I’m looking at you, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and Phoenix, etc. For that matter, we need to not build cities where ther is no food or water. Duh.
@mike808@spacemart That is my feeling exactly. I’m not on a suburban street, but I am in area of larger pacels where there is about 1/2 acre front yard. unfortunately my neighbors all have this expectation of pretty lawns so I have to maintain it at least a little and make it never has visible weeds going to seed because one time my bitchy neighbor scolded me for that since she was afraid weed seeds would get over to her side, which was probably a valid concern…. At the time my riding lawnmower had died and I ordered a new electric one but like many things last year, supplies were limited and shipment kept getting delayed.
@mike808@pmarin@spacemart Around here, the HOA Nazis patrol in packs. And don’t get me started on the city of Plano on the north side of Dallas, which out HOA’s the HOAs. You can actually get fined by the bloody city for having weeds in your lawn.
@Pony I have rabbits (wild) and they work at it but can’t keep up. I hear goats are good for things like thorny blackberries, which I have (the thorny blackberries, unfortunately not the goats)
@pmarin@Pony The local variety of native blackberry is called “dewberries”, and their growth habit is intensely annoying. It has both subsurface and above-ground runners, and even a one-inch piece of the subsurface ones will sprout into two new ones with multiple underground runners already deploying by the time you notice it.
@pmarin@werehatrack I’m a Washington State native. I know alllllll about dem blackberry vines. I once cleared a quarter acre of them that had grown all the way up the trees over 30 feet high. I still have scars.
Don’t have to do it.
We took out all of our grass and put in Corsican mint ground cover. Wherever my wife wants to plant vegetables she can just dig a hole. We have veggie garden everywhere now. If you do it right it still looks nice too.
@kostia It’s really cool. It moves fairly slow so you can cut it back where you want easily. It likes to creep up pots and stuff and gives a really cool overgrown antique aesthetic. It’s not tenacious like ivy or moss so removing it is easy. It smells great too.
I’ve never seen it die in the winter but I’m in the Pacific Northwest and it doesn’t get extremely cold here.
Oh, they are also rugged. You can walk on them and tear out a chunk and just move it to a patch of bare ground and it will almost always take. Great for those like me with a brown thumb.
One common brand is Stepables. Start with a little because you’ll have enough to transplant before long.
@tweezak Something tells me that Houston’s summer could dispose of it easily. The only things that reliably persist without heavy watering during our dry spells are Bahia grass (which we all loathe with intense passion, but the highway department adores) and certain of the native weeds that are next to unkillable.
On my second mowing season with an electric self-propelled mower and it is wonderful. I basically just turn it on and hold down the handle and walk behind it and it pushes itself. I’ve always liked mowing ever since I was a kid. I can just put on my headphones listen to my podcast or whatever and tune the rest of the world out.
I live in the desert where few yards have grass. My front is all rocks with one tree and back yard is half wood deck and half pavers. We’re in a drought, no one should have grass here.
I have two mowing methods, neither of which I am really thrilled to undertake.
It has rained for 30 days and my lawn is a swamp with me having to clean the mower every 4 minutes even on the highest setting. Just get this shit cut.
Or, yea, I do have a roller that attaches to my push mower and I will make stripes in my tiny yard. Consider it education from landscape days I cannot ignore. That only happens in the lush spring or fall. No point in it now when the earth is getting baked.
I hate, hate, hate mowing. Growing up my family had a little push mower and I really, really hated it. Never again do I want to touch a yard with a mower; I live in the desert and do not ever intend to mow again. I will pay someone the moment a yard is ever required. Doesn’t help that I grew up in Iowa, so the ground was very fertile. We had to mow every week, and we had a pretty decent chunk of land.
I have a townhouse with a postage-stamp front yard. I’d let it go if I could, or cover it with rocks (xeriscaping? whatever that’s called), but I also have a frigging HOA.
Years ago my old neighbor got fed up with me not taking care of it, and had her neighbor on the other side start doing it. She’s long gone, moved away many years ago. He still mows my lawn, the one between us, and a couple more on each side. He won’t let us pay him, even in brownies. His wife says he just likes the time alone. He has teenage kids now, so I guess that makes sense.
My kid’s whole life we’ve only called Rick “the nice man.” As in, The nice man mowed the lawn this morning (which he did).
So let’s hear it for Rick. Everyone should have a nice man.
My dad does it for me. I mean I think he does it just because AND because he likes to ride my lawn tractor lol
@tinamarie1974 Nice!
@Kyeh I have awesome parents
LEGOS! EGGOS! STRATEGO! AWESOME!
I hate it.
I hate how hot it is outside. I hate that my husband has to do it when he could be spending time with the kids. I hate doing it myself. I hate the bugs. I hate mowing down the plants that are good for pollinators.
I enjoy it for about 5 minutes and feel proud and accomplished. Then I’m quickly ready to be done with it.
And after all that, we have to do it again a week or two later.
I’m allergic to grass, I have to hire someone. Otherwise I feel like I have the flu for a couple of days.
@iluvmingos Covid mask! Extra eye protection also helps.
I paid my mowing dues. No I’m paying someone else’s mowing dues.
I don’t like it, but I did get a riding mower last year. But of course there are some places the rider can’t go. Which means I then either need to get out the push mower or go crazy with the weedeater. I live on a corner and have a stop sign post, a street sign post, a fire hydrant and a water main valve. They are all near each other, so that whole corner can’t be got with the rider. Plus I have 7 trees to go around in circles, and then still have to weed eat.
I really hate weed eating more than mowing. And the rider is far better than the push mower, especially when it’s 90+ outside. But I really wish the grass and weeds would stop growing so fast.
Replace the grass with river rock. More work than mowing but you only have to do it once.
@brennyn my husband tried that years ago with one area on the yard. Now I have to weed eat it and spray it regularly. It had been lined before we put the rock on too, but that doesn’t stop the weeds around here.
I miss it because I live in a condo that charges me to have someone do it badly.
@yakkoTDI … and probably loudly
i don’t understand mowing complaints. don’t wanna mow? get rid of grass!
@spacemart Or stop trying to force monoculture of grasses that are not supposed to be green all year and 2 inches tall.
Grass is a prairie plant. It isn’t supposed to suck up water all year because it doesn’t rain all year in the prairie. It is supposed to go dormant and look like it is dead most of the year.
And we need to stop trying to do dumb shit like grow acres of lush green grass in the middle of the fucking desert I’m looking at you, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and Phoenix, etc. For that matter, we need to not build cities where ther is no food or water. Duh.
@mike808 @spacemart That is my feeling exactly. I’m not on a suburban street, but I am in area of larger pacels where there is about 1/2 acre front yard. unfortunately my neighbors all have this expectation of pretty lawns so I have to maintain it at least a little and make it never has visible weeds going to seed because one time my bitchy neighbor scolded me for that since she was afraid weed seeds would get over to her side, which was probably a valid concern…. At the time my riding lawnmower had died and I ordered a new electric one but like many things last year, supplies were limited and shipment kept getting delayed.
@pmarin @spacemart
Just Can 'o Meadow that shit.
Unless you have some HOA Nazis patrolling to make sure none of y’all get too uppity.
@mike808 @pmarin @spacemart Around here, the HOA Nazis patrol in packs. And don’t get me started on the city of Plano on the north side of Dallas, which out HOA’s the HOAs. You can actually get fined by the bloody city for having weeds in your lawn.
@pmarin @spacemart @werehatrack
Sounds like y’all need to get the fuck out of Texas. Pick a reason.
We got sheep. They keep things pretty well mowed.
@Pony I have rabbits (wild) and they work at it but can’t keep up. I hear goats are good for things like thorny blackberries, which I have (the thorny blackberries, unfortunately not the goats)
@pmarin @Pony The local variety of native blackberry is called “dewberries”, and their growth habit is intensely annoying. It has both subsurface and above-ground runners, and even a one-inch piece of the subsurface ones will sprout into two new ones with multiple underground runners already deploying by the time you notice it.
@pmarin @werehatrack I’m a Washington State native. I know alllllll about dem blackberry vines. I once cleared a quarter acre of them that had grown all the way up the trees over 30 feet high. I still have scars.
It’s fine until it gets hot. When it gets into the 90s I’m pretty meh on it. Also having a self propelled electric helps. To push uphill
Having a lawn is dumb. Having to mow it is even dumber. ACAB includes HOAs. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Don’t have to do it.
We took out all of our grass and put in Corsican mint ground cover. Wherever my wife wants to plant vegetables she can just dig a hole. We have veggie garden everywhere now. If you do it right it still looks nice too.
@tweezak That looks amazing. Does it go brown in the winter and then come back? Does it spread beyond where you want it?
@kostia It’s really cool. It moves fairly slow so you can cut it back where you want easily. It likes to creep up pots and stuff and gives a really cool overgrown antique aesthetic. It’s not tenacious like ivy or moss so removing it is easy. It smells great too.
I’ve never seen it die in the winter but I’m in the Pacific Northwest and it doesn’t get extremely cold here.
Oh, they are also rugged. You can walk on them and tear out a chunk and just move it to a patch of bare ground and it will almost always take. Great for those like me with a brown thumb.
One common brand is Stepables. Start with a little because you’ll have enough to transplant before long.
@tweezak Something tells me that Houston’s summer could dispose of it easily. The only things that reliably persist without heavy watering during our dry spells are Bahia grass (which we all loathe with intense passion, but the highway department adores) and certain of the native weeds that are next to unkillable.
@werehatrack very likely. I would check the zone rating. I’m in zone 7. Not sure what zone TX is.
Meh. The mowing is OK, the weed whacking is annoying.
For a while, I read the topic as “Meowing”.
/giphy drunk cat
@narfcake He meant to do that.
@narfcake Just further proof that you really ARE a cat.
@Kyeh I iz not a cat.
@narfcake
@rockblossom
@rockblossom So classic! And then @narfcake posted this:
On my second mowing season with an electric self-propelled mower and it is wonderful. I basically just turn it on and hold down the handle and walk behind it and it pushes itself. I’ve always liked mowing ever since I was a kid. I can just put on my headphones listen to my podcast or whatever and tune the rest of the world out.
A riding mower has turned an hour job into 15-20 minutes, so that’s nice.
I live in the desert where few yards have grass. My front is all rocks with one tree and back yard is half wood deck and half pavers. We’re in a drought, no one should have grass here.
I don’t like doing it, but it is exercise. Feels so good when I’m done!
I have two mowing methods, neither of which I am really thrilled to undertake.
It has rained for 30 days and my lawn is a swamp with me having to clean the mower every 4 minutes even on the highest setting. Just get this shit cut.
Or, yea, I do have a roller that attaches to my push mower and I will make stripes in my tiny yard. Consider it education from landscape days I cannot ignore. That only happens in the lush spring or fall. No point in it now when the earth is getting baked.
I hate, hate, hate mowing. Growing up my family had a little push mower and I really, really hated it. Never again do I want to touch a yard with a mower; I live in the desert and do not ever intend to mow again. I will pay someone the moment a yard is ever required. Doesn’t help that I grew up in Iowa, so the ground was very fertile. We had to mow every week, and we had a pretty decent chunk of land.
I have a townhouse with a postage-stamp front yard. I’d let it go if I could, or cover it with rocks (xeriscaping? whatever that’s called), but I also have a frigging HOA.
Years ago my old neighbor got fed up with me not taking care of it, and had her neighbor on the other side start doing it. She’s long gone, moved away many years ago. He still mows my lawn, the one between us, and a couple more on each side. He won’t let us pay him, even in brownies. His wife says he just likes the time alone. He has teenage kids now, so I guess that makes sense.
My kid’s whole life we’ve only called Rick “the nice man.” As in, The nice man mowed the lawn this morning (which he did).
So let’s hear it for Rick. Everyone should have a nice man.
Got a robot lawn mower a couple years ago. It mows every night from midnight till 1:30.
And sometimes after work when I want to have a beer and watch.
@chickenherpe I’d love it if Meh would offer a robot lawn mower…