Mowing the Lawn
At our new house we have a quarter acre, which doesn't sound like a whole lot, and doesn't even look like a huge amount of land, but let me tell you, when you are obligated to mow a quarter of an acre, even subtracting the areas that have no grass like the house, the driveway, etc., well, it's a lot!
I spent the first 30 years of my life in either a New York City Apartment or various dorms, townhouses, and such, none of which I had to mow a lawn at. I actually mowed my first lawn when I was maybe 22, when I went to visit my brother and he threatened to make me mow his lawn. Having never done this, of course, I decided it would be fun, and for a 22-year-old kid who had never lived outside of a midtown Manhattan apartment on the 15th floor, it was!
I did live in a house for a couple of years when I was in my early thirties, but somehow managed to mow the lawn only once, perhaps because roommates and our landlord was nice enough to do it before I had the chance (or realized it should be mowed).
Of course both my previous experiences with mowing were from gas-powered self-propelled mowers. We decided that we wanted to be more ecologically friendly and buy an electric, which is not self-propelled. Not only do you have to push the thing continuously, but you have to be constantly on your guard that you are not going to run over the power cord, which has to reach for up to 80 or more feet at points at the far end of our yard! It basically took me the entire day on Sunday. Now, granted this is my first time mowing on this lawn and with this mower and I should become more efficient, but I'm a bit doubtful at doing much better than halving the time, which means I will probably be looking at two or three hourse! I will say that it was great exercise, but on the other hand, I am feeling like I was roughed up by some bodyguards today!
I'm sure the 80% or so of you out there who grew up around lawns and having intimate experience with mowing are laughing at the poor city slicker all of a sudden realizing what buying a house means! Although I would never call myself a "slicker!" Isn't there a term for a guy who grew up in a city apartment with all it implies as far as lack of skills in home-related areas, but who never took advantage of all the things that a major city like NYC is famous for, with the exception of restaurants? Of course we went to a museum every once in a while, but many of these trips were via school. We went to tourist attractions like the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, etc. when we had visitors from out of town. We saw a few plays throughout the years, including Death of a Salesman, Fences, Cats, Biloxi Blues, The Wiz, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. But nothing a visitor who came once a year for a weekend couldn't have experienced. I grew up a nerdy introverted guy and so never even considered going to any of the bountiful clubs in the city. So in a way I feel like I missed out not only on the world that I wasn't exposed to, but even to the one I was. Oh well, at least this gives me stuff to be excited to learn about later in life and to write about here!