My house is situated so that there is about 3 feet between the back of the house and the fence between us and the neighbors. On one end of the house we have a deck that extends partly behind the garage. In the space between the deck, the garage, the fence and a storage shed we have a 12 foot round pool for the kids. They splash arouund while I find a shady spot and read blogs or write mine. Which is what I'm doing now.

My neighbor is mowing his lawn. Something he does at least twice a week. I don't mind the sound of a lawnmower. it's a fairly steady drone that eventually becomes background. But not my neighbor's lawnmower. I guess it must be at least 30 years old and he unfortunately has enough knowledge of small engines that instead of replacing it, he keeps fixing it. Also unfortunate is that best he can do is to get it to run in a sort of pulsating fashion. Reving between full throttle and idle at about 60 beats per minute.

Perhaps because of the inefficiency of the pulsating engine, it takes him a long time to mow his less than .25 acre property. He also has to stop periodically to empty the clipping bag, and probably re-fill the gas. based on the noxious smell of the exhaust from the thing he probably goes through twice the gas of a normal lawnmower.

If I could afford it, I would go to Home Depot and buy a brand new lawnmower, put a big bow on it and leave it in his driveway in the middle of the night.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 10:20 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment