Lesson #8: Alternative method to landmines discovered

I am anal about few things compared to your standard anal husband.  But, I worked on the Turfgrass Management Staff at the Town & Country Club golf course from the time I was 15 to the time I went to medical school.  During those years, I learned how to mow a perfectly straight line, crisscross a green, and stripe a fairway as good as anyone at Augusta National.  I used to have an 80 ft string with a nail tied to each end that I would stretch across my parents’ yard when I was growing up, then I would run the left side of the LawnBoy right along it.  My dad would marvel at how straight the lines were across the big yard.  If we were having a party at the house, I may even mow a crisscross that day.

The problem now lies in the fact that I am no longer a member of the Turfgrass Management Staff, but still have this urge to mow very straight lines, crisscross, and have a ballpark-like turf.  When I bought this house 10 years ago, it had a yard full of weeds.  Now she’s green and plush.   The section of our front yard that is on the other side of the sidewalk along the parkway is city property.  I, however, have always mowed it because it allows me to have nice long lines.  The neighbors weren’t fond of this practice.  I could not figure out why.  I found out many years ago when I realized that those downstream of my yard didn’t get their parkway side of the front yard mowed any more because the city mowers stopped at my mowed yard.  Anyways, most of them have gotten over that after 10 years. 

The problem more recently appeared when the city replaced Walt the veteran mower with someone new.  The new guy decided that he was going to mow the parkway in front of my house a month ago or so.  The city mows at 3/4”-1” height and therefore scalps the hell out of my front yard when they mow.  It looks like crap and just grows weeds when it is cut that short.  So I had to figure out how to let the new guy know he was crossing a line without appearing totally anal about my yard.

I have tried to time my mowing within 24 hrs of the city’s schedule, but haven’t been able to predict 100% recently because all the rain here has thrown off their usual Tuesday mowing cycle.  I figure that if they see freshly cut grass with stripes, abutting their long city grass they will stop at that juncture.  The last few weeks I have mowed 2-3 days prior to the city, and it didn’t work.  So, this week, I mowed Thursday, they didn’t mow Friday.  I mowed Sunday, they didn’t mow Monday.  I went out there Monday night (Jessie asked what the hell I was doing mowing again) and laid down some heavy lines about 5 feet upstream of where our yard ends.  I went over them 3-4 times.  It was pretty darn obvious this time because the city hadn’t mowed for almost 2 weeks because of the rain.  I decided if this didn’t work, I was going to buy a 6pk of landmines at Ax-Man army surplus store this week. 

Tuesday morning, 10 hours after I mowed, we awoke to the sounds of a Toro triplex 72” rider coming down the parkway.  Here are the pictures I shot on my phone out of the bedroom window…

Picture #1, mower approaching the warning lines on the upstream side of the tree.  You can see my stripes in the picture.  I am starting to get nervous.

Picture #2, mower comes right up to the tree, pauses and makes a sharp turn to the right, overlapping my warning stripes only!

Hallelujah!   Now it is just a question of whether this game has to be repeated every Monday night, or whether my over-anal attempt this week was enough to teach the new mower where to stop.  We’ll see next week. 

Lesson?  If you are anal enough, you can avoid purchasing and using landmines within St. Paul city limits.