Mowing the Lawn to Infinity
That’s what it seems like, anyway. This house has a half acre yard. My electric lawn mower is supposed to handle a third acre on a single charge. The grass was tall when we arrived, but not as bad as last time when I beat it back, mostly with a weed eater. After the moving van pulled away, I plugged in the lawn mower to get a good charge on it. By Tuesday, I was able to set the mower high to take the top off the lawn. It took four charges to get through the entire yard. This morning, I made the first pass at the proper mowing height, and got two-thirds of the front yard done. At this rate, it will take three charges to mow the lawn on a regular basis. That means mowing the lawn will most likely be a three day job. I also have a self-propelled reel-type gas mower, but Hubby says he needs to adjust it. I can also use that, but the handle height is a little lower than I would like, and there’s no way to raise it.
While waiting for the mower to charge, I did get a lot of trimming done on hedges. I’ve done the easy work. The hard work remains — eradicating the English Ivy attempting to overtake the front of the house.
The other work taking up our time was moving a few things into the house. This is time consuming, because we are cleaning before we put stuff in rooms as well as sorting what we want from what we don’t want. I did get the desktop set up a couple of days ago. No printer yet, but we carried it upstairs this morning before Hubby had to head back to San Antonio for some obligations he has to take care of there.
I have a workshop to write for Forward Motion and many, many boxes to sift. And more lawn to mow.
I happened upon your blog, and your latest post was the best electric lawn mower review I’ve ever read. The amazon electric lawn mower product reviews have nothing on you!
Your writing is fresh and crisp.
-Lydia
I’ve been thinking about an electric mower, but have worried about one having enough charge. There’s one out — I think by Sears — that will also allow you to plug in an extension cord to finish a lawn if the charge runs out.
I have a Black and Decker. It’s rated for 1/3 acre, and on my old lawn, typical for suburbia, it did very well unless I let the lawn get too long. Here, on our half acre, it takes three charges to do it all. I’ve had it for three years and really like it. If your lawn isn’t too large, you should be fine.
With the plug-in models, I’d be afraid of mowing over the extension cord. I do it all the time with hedge trimmers already.
I watched my neighbor with a corded mower and she looked just like she was vacuuming the lawn. I’m sure I’d run over the cord. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run over the vacuum cord.
On the town lot we previously had, a corded mower worked fine. You just set up a system where you move consistently away from the house so you’re not fighting the cord.
Sounds you need what we have on the farm, Jean–a riding mower. My lawn (bless my in-laws for planting a large one way back when…) takes about three hours even on the rider, which has a blade swath nearly double a push mower.
Or maybe what you need is a goat!
Given Hubby’s preference for reel mowers, I’d need something like this: http://www.4seasongreenhouse.com/promow-gold-premium-gang-reel-mower-p-1316.html
So that rig pulls behind an ATV or something, then? It wouldn’t work well on my lawn, I don’t think. It wasn’t well enough planned out and I’m continuously dodging trees and flower beds (though I’ve sodded in a couple of those….)