They came today. An odd combination of garden implements — a reel mower and a flame thrower. That’s right — flame thrower. My friends at Lehman’s feature a unique weed solution — a propane-powered weed-eating fire machine. Lehman’s calls it a garden torch, except you get the feeling that you’re holding a blowtorch in your hand. It makes that low rumbling sound of fire spraying from the nozzle in a flame so blue that at times it’s invisible. It does dispatch weeds quickly. (I realize that propane gas puts some carbon back into the atmosphere, but we’ll use the garden torch for spot weed control. Beats Agent Orange, we think!)
Then, there’s the reel mower. I really like it, no pun intended. I assembled the handle in about 5-minutes, carried all 17-lbs of it to the front yard, and proceeded to mow away. Debbie loves to mow, so she took it away from me for a while. After the front, we did the yard around the garden. All in very short order. Here are some things I learned on my first time “running” our new 18″ solar-powered (only because you can’t cut grass in the dark) reel mower:
- Sticks will stop it dead. You have to pick up the yard a little more carefully. I kept running over the same tiny stick, which immediately jammed the reel. Not a big deal, but I started looking out for objects-other-than-grass to move out of the way.
- The safety cutoff is automatic. You stop walking, it stops cutting. It would be really hard to cut off a finger on this mower, unless you did something really stupid. I am sure there is that possibility, but the thing is so safe that my 6-year old neighbor even got to push. His comment was, “I can walk this close (he was really close) because it won’t hurt me.”
- The whir of the blades makes a nice scissor-sound. Remember Edward Scissor-hands? Not exactly the same, but you get the idea. I read the other day, that Calcutta has a noise level so high that it’s like standing next to a lawn mower. Not this lawnmower, however. No 110-decibel gasoline engine to make you go deaf. When you stop walking, the noise stops, too. Very zen.
- The grass seems to prefer being snipped to being decapitated. That, of course, is my opinion, but tiny blades of grass seem to jump off the reel as I walked. My old mulching Lawnboy can chew up some turf, but again, the zen quality is missing.
Our goal is to do away with all our gasoline-powered equipment — lawn mower, string trimmer, blower, and tiller. They’re all good pieces of equipment, but it is much more challenging and enjoyable to deal directly with the yard and garden.
During his farming days, Wendell Berry plowed with horses and mules, refusing to use a tractor. Same idea here, only on a smaller scale. Berry contended that plowing with horses or mules involved more skill and engagement than running a tractor. I think he’s right, and that’s also true in the yard and garden. Anybody need some good, used gas-powered yard equipment? Stay simple.
An odd combination of gas-powered and non-gas powered.