I am convinced that the grass in our yard is blessed (cursed) to forever keep growing, unmolested by predatory blades.

Currently there are three broken mowers sitting in our cellar, all of them broken beyond repair, according to our former neighbors. Since August, we’ve alternated between using weedwackers on the entire lawn (not fun), or borrowing other people’s mowers.

A month ago, E borrowed a mower that belongs to our friends down the street. It was out of gas, so E decided to rummage around and see what was in the cellar. He brightened up when he saw what looked like a gas can, and poured it in without reviewing its contents. The mower, which had been sputtering, went silent.

“What to do with all this bad gas?” he wondered, and asked the Internets. A search led him to believe that he could mix some bad gas with a lot of good gas, and the good gas would dilute the effect of the bad. Not being one to waste any gas, good or bad, he put a little bit of it in the tank of his car. The car, which had been running, went silent.

Then followed a long rigmarole in which we drained the mower and it still didn’t work, and it sat in our yard for a week. The friends who lent us the mower kept inquiring about its status, and both lawns in the meantime kept growing and growing. Finally our neighbors’ father, a lawnmower repairman, generously fixed it for us. Hooray!

Of course it took a day or two for the grass to grow right back, encouraged by the torrential rains of July. And we didn’t want to impose upon our friends for the mower that we broke last time. Luckily enough, Krissy got her mower fixed, and I asked to borrow it last night!

After having a go at mowing last night, our lawn now looks like this:

It’s a mow hawk, get it? ha, ha. Well trimmed areas, surrounded by erratic lines of tall grass, and some clover thrown into the mix.

I got about halfway through before the mower decided to die and not come back. Our grass is either made out of industrial strength steel, or our lawn is cursed. Or maybe there is a mower-dismantling conspiracy involving the snakes, who might be using our yard for sneaky snake trysts. Maybe we should offer the appropriate sacrifices to appease the elusive Possum Lord who has taken up residence here.

Or maybe I should just pray that the August sun will broil the grass brown. Make the problem wither and die! Sure I’ll miss having green space, but for that, I can go visit the lawns on our block that aren’t quite so…blessed.

*edit: after several more tries, the lawnmower started up again and my unwieldy lawn has successfully been scalped. Just in time, too - caught a sneaky snake trying to make love to our garden hose. What a hussy.