The smell of fresh clipped grass is one of those scents that transports you back in time to a summer making extra coin cutting the neighbors lawn or slaving away on your dad’s golf course green of a yard.  It can either bring a smile to one’s face or twist the mouth into an outward sign for an inner loathing.  I have a touch of the OCD when it comes to lawn care and have left every yard in every rental house I have ever lived in exponentially better shape than when I moved in.  Today, I got to cut the grass for the very first time in my very own new home.  It was magical for so many reasons:  My house, my yard, my grass – not a rental and not my parents.  The yard has so much potential to become a small, well-kept carpet of medium length green, shaded by a fruit tree, edged with flowers and lavender, and fenced with wrought-iron.  Edging and mowing our own little patch of Heaven made my dark little soul happy, well that and I got to spend some time murdering dandelions.  That weed has no place in my universe.  They are a hateful green grass-cancer that has to be pulled up by the root.  I even have an assortment of special tools that make their demise faster, easier, and thorough.

Along with the house came an electric lawn mower and I have been itching to give it a try all winter.  As I lived most of my lawn cutting years in the heat of the South where the grass is thick and the yards can be expansive, I am most familiar with 2 or 4-stroke, blue smoke belching push mowers.  They all seem to conch out either just as you start when you have a tiny patch left in the very middle.  Our yard now is small and the electric is the way to go!  It was quiet, light, height adjustment was a cinch, and I didn’t have to suck in exhaust fumes for an hour.  I also have an electric edger that I paid $5 for at a garage sale.  I used it once at our rental place and now here, so I think that it has now paid for its self.  I figure that every time I use it from this point on is just gravy.  I have a heavy-duty weed eater/trimmer that I picked up cheap and it ran for almost all of last summer, but it has a carburetor issue.  After experiencing the sweetness of electric yard maintenance, I will put $10 bucks into the gas unit and sell it, applying the funds to an electric model.