On Yard Maintenance …

No thistling while you work!Our property is a little over 10 acres and mostly wooded. Last summer we cleared about three acres [YouTube] in order to have a garden and to allow sunlight to shine on our driveway—lest we should slide down the icy steep slope.

Despite the size of our plot, we only mow a small portion of the yard immediately surrounding the house. Notice I used the word “yard” and not the term “grass,” and certainly not “lawn.” From a distance our yard may look like grass, but it is mostly made up of many grass-like plants. Not being a big fan of the work (or chemicals) involved in maintaining a real lawn, we are happy to let the yard go au natural. However, not so much that the house is obscured by the inevitable not-really-grass forest.

It doesn’t hurt that the “lawn” mower is incapable of the stamina required to mow more than we currently do. The mower we have was a housewarming gift from my father, leftover from our house in Maryland where we had a postage-sized plot which could easily be mowed in under 30 minutes on one charge.

Yes, charge.

Our mower is a cordless rechargeable, and—I assume—quite unusual in rural Vermont, even with a large hippie population fighting global warming. It suits our needs and has enough power to cut as much not-really-grass as we need.

In fact, the mower’s limited power has helped inspire the landscaping surrounding the house. Well, that, and I got a late start on the mowing this year due to the rainier spring. The result was that the areas I left to grow on their own produced nice patches of wild flowers. We still have to keep on the alert for aggressive and invasive species—and definitely thistle.


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  1. The purple thistle is one of my favorite flowers. Unfortunately I’m constantly eradicating them. As much as I like looking at them I really don’t like stepping on them or brushing up against them. A love hate relationship…

    Comment by Walter Jeffries — November 1, 2007 #

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