A landscape artist, he is not. A lawn scape butcherer is a more accurate term when it comes to Lucas and lawn mowing.
Lucas’ job is mowing our lawn. He gets paid fairly handsomely for a job he hates…sounds like real life. He does what he can to push off mowing the lawn. This past time it was almost two weeks without a mow. Our rule is, “you mow the lawn ~ you get paid. But if you don’t mow the lawn ~ you pay Dad for doing your job.” It’s a $50 swing…Lucas can earn $25 or he can end up paying Stan $25. So far, Lucas hasn’t had to pay. There have been threats and close calls but he’s gotten the job done just in the nick of time.
Last night was one of those times. It was down to the wire. Stan’s threat to mow the lawn loomed out there like a hurricane waiting to come ashore. There was one small problem…yesterday it rained so the lawn was saturated. Stan gave Lucas the instructions “go out into the back yard with the lawn mower and see if it’s mowable.” No further instructions were given…like why it would be better to do a spot check in the back yard. Lucas, and his 12 year old brain, heard “go mow the lawn.”
He took the lawnmower to the front yard and proceeded to mow the sopping wet grass. I came home to grass armageddon. It looked like the apocolypse hit in the form of a lawn mower. There were piles of wet, sticky, globbed up grass stretching from our front walkway, onto the driveway, down to the sidewalk and into the street.
These pictures were taken this morning, after a rain and well after the snow shovel was employed to help get up the majority of grass clippings that spewed from the lawn mower in great, giant, wet clumps.
This is not Lucas’ first foray into the realm of disasturous lawn jobs.
A couple of years ago he was employed by our neighbor to mow her lawn. One particular day Lucas grabbed the lawn mower and went to mow her lawn. At this point in Lucas’ lawn mowing career, he was not good about “seeing” the lines he created as he walked behind the lawnmower, back and forth across the grass. His “lines” were not straight and he missed clumps of grass as he mowed in squiggly lines. Why our neighbor employed him, and paid him $35 to mow her lawn I’ll never know but she did. This particular day, though, Lucas was determined to mow in straight lines and mow it well. He came into me about 5 minutes after he started and said “the lawn mower keeps stalling.” I’ve mowed a lawn once in my life…I know nothing about mowing lawns, lawn mowers, the gas that goes in them…NOTHING! The one and only time I mowed our lawn I had to stop the UPS guy to help me out. So I told Lucas to check the gas tank and keep on mowing or to go ask Zach for help and advice. Another ten minutes passes and he comes back in the house with the same tale ~ the lawn mower keeps stalling but now there’s a bigger problem. The part of the grass he has mowed is starting to turn brown…UH, OH! What the hell??
It turns out Lucas had the blades way too low so the grass was clumping up in the lawn mower, causing it to stall and on top of it the part of the grass Lucas mowed was turning brown because it was too short and it was starting to burn…Luckily, the part of the grass he mowed was in the shape of a giant D which was the grade he got on that particular lawn mowing job. Our neighbor paid him just the same, God love her! But we fired him from lawn mowing for a while!
Yesterday’s job could have been avoided if Lucas would have listened to Stan when he told him to try mowing the back yard first. The lawn mower would have spewed great, wet globs of soggy grass back onto the grass and not on the driveway, sidewalk, street, front walkway, etc…Lucas’ reason for mowing the front was that Stan didn’t explain WHY he should mow the back. He just heard “MOW.” Lucas is one of those kids who needs a bit of an explaination and not just an order. Stan is one of those people who can give and take orders with the best of them. He doesn’t need much in the way of explainations. Gonna be an interesting time when Lucas hits full on teenagehood, let me tell ya’!
If we can just get Lucas to quit with the lawn mowing malfunctions we can start working on getting through the teenage years!
Oh, for the love of my children…
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Oh, for the love of my children... 
I can picture lucas mowing the lawn AND I can most definitely picture you chasing down the UPS guy!
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