As I was sitting outside soaking in the magical spring weather, I heard the sound of a lawnmower. The first thing came to my mind was, “Shit, not already!” I surveyed our lawn, already a beautiful lush green, and decided that it wasn’t that high yet. What is wrong with these people! It is only the first week in May and still cold in the evening. It can wait.

A week later, I heard the lawnmower again. The sound makes me very anxious, because once I start mowing; my life is committed to mowing 3 hours a week, every week until the fall (we have a rather large lawn, unfortunately). That’s a lot of time and fossil fuels (we have too much lawn for a push-reel mower) committed to keeping the lawn shorter than 4 inches tall. So of course, I start thinking of reasons why I should and can put mowing off. The first reason that came to mind seemed very reasonable. Mike did not check out the mower to make sure it is in good working condition. Therefore, it really didn’t make sense for me to start it up, because I couldn’t fix it, if it needed fixing. Heaven forbid if it broke while I was mowing.

A couple of days later, I heard the same lawnmower again. This time I noticed the buds on the Redbud tree, they were hardly visible. Then I surveyed the lawn for violet ~ none. Well, that was a no brainer and my best excuse for not mowing. There is no reason to mow a lawn until after the violets have been harvested from the lawn for at least five or more salads. Sure, I can go into the woods to harvest them, but nothing is better than harvesting flowers and herbs from your lawn. And you cannot harvest flowers and herbs after you have mowed over them, yuck! So folks, I have the best reason (besides using fossil fuels) for not mowing our lawn for a couple of more weeks. I need to harvest my “lawn” first. It’s good to be a forager!

A salad made last spring ~ now that’s the perfect reason to not mow the lawn.