alternative energy 101

Question: Is this a relic of the past or is it the hope for the future?

Answer: Both

Our lawn mower finally died. The one I poured gas into through a funnel. The one that I quessed was killing small amphibians and insects as I powered on. The one that eventually emitted dark black smoke so that I had a headache when I was done mowing. It was self propelled and I just had to guide it as it made it's way across the lawn. David kept it going with baling wire and string until finally oil spilled out and it gave it's last gasp. Done.
I never liked it. A necessary evil of (yes, we do live in...) suburbia.

So the discussions started over the dinner table. Should we buy a Neutron? It is an electric lawn mower made in Vergennes, Vermont and advertised in all environmental magazines. Expensive of course and only good for small lawns. Our "lawn" is a combination of many green plants growing together. Weeds and grass intermingled, so the mower has to be rugged. Probably not the solution for us.

In the 1950's of my youth, lawns were perfect and weeds not tolerated. My dad had a tool that looked like a giant syringe as long as a cane so you didn't even have to bend down to use it. The plastic tube was a tasteful environmental green color. He filled it with acrid smelling deadly chemicals and gave a shot to every dandelion in the yard. This was before the publication of Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring. In those days America was having a love affair with chemicals. In her book, she blew the whistle on the powerful chemical companies. Her editor at Houghton Mifflin, Paul Brooks, took a risk publishing such a controversial book. It is still in print. Because of it, eagles are back on the coast of Maine. In spite of it, cancer is everywhere.

Back to the lawn mower. As our discussions continued, the grass grew; verdant this year with all the rain. I borrowed a friends' lawn mower twice but grew weary of hauling that thing over here and returning it politely with a full tank.
One day in frustration, I grabbed the old push mower that we had brought up from Connecticut when David's mother moved out.

I sighed and thought, As if this will work! but started pushing. The familiar clack clack clack of the blades took me right back to being a kid. I began to smell that wonderful green smell of freshly mown grass which had so long been obfuscated by the smell of burning oil. And I was creating a line of mown grass! It was actually working! Granted it looked a little like a bad haircut but the solution is to hit it from the other direction as well. The grass had gotten long at this point in the summer and the tall stubborn weeds that simply lay down as the mower went over and popped back up victorious, had to be pulled out by hand. But I liked the experience. I sweated like they did in the old days. I seem to remember my brothers doing this in the New Jersey heat with streaks of sweat soaking through the backs of their tee shirts.

I enjoyed the process. After years of wincing and gagging behind the deafening Toro, I could mow the lawn in peace and get lost in my thoughts and really notice the world around me. Somehow we've been led to believe that we need bigger and bigger machines to accomplish simple tasks. Time to rediscover an alternative energy source: ourselves.