The Hopeless Homeowner Series, Chapter 2: Adventures in Modern Landscaping

This is the second installment of a series of posts regarding our misadventures in owning a home.  We recently bought a home in an active adult community (well, not really, but let's just say we're the spring chickens on the block by a decent decade and a half), and we have a great deal more space to live in now.  Proportional to the increased living space is the increased complexity and nuance of owning a home, as well as all the stuff you have to buy and all of things that go wrong in the process.  The stories are as follows...

Whether they are aware of this or not, adults exist somewhere on a continuum of willingness to endure chores typically considered to be "workmanlike".  (To me, "workmanlike" tasks involve a serious amount of dirt, fumbling around with tools, sweat, and/or muscular ability.  I would use the term "blue-collar" instead, but I think the term is inaccurate and outdated in a time and place where sanitation employees routinely earn six-figure incomes.)

There are those people who, through some combination of engineering inclination, stick-to-it-ive-ness, fearlessness, love of the outdoors, and creativity, learn to do everything on their own and truly become handy.  These are the folks that you call when you can't figure out how something works, you've already spent an hour or two Googling the problem, and you've found the problem to be so strange that you need someone whom you know has encountered - and solved - it before.  They'll remember the fix, even if it was an isolated incident that happened ten years ago, and they'll walk you through it in about five minutes.  (Sometimes they'll be so proud of themselves for remembering the fix that they'll thank you for prompting the recall, but that's a completely different story altogether...)

On the other end of the continuum are those who are so inexperienced (or so scared) of simple household maintenance chores that they barely attempt to try them, instead deciding to outsource them to other people.  I am scared to death of falling into this category, because it's an easy way to bleed cash and it announces to the entire world that I am lazy (or at worst, a classist), and it violates my fundamental moral code of self-sufficiency.

I'm so inexperienced at this type of stuff that, while I know where I'd like to be, I have no clue where I currently exist on this continuum.  So far, I've managed not to call a professional for all but the obvious tasks (e.g., replacing a water heater, which requires welding equipment and such acumen that the otherwise-handy people whom I typically call for advice always call professionals to install for them).  But on the other hand, I routinely take several days - and several attempts - to finish even the simplest installation projects, which is strange because I am typically quite the impatient individual.

But I've found that sleeping on a difficult step to fixing something works for me - I approach it again with a new perspective, and I'm well-rested and in a different (if not better) mood at the time, and more often than not the damned problem gets fixed the second time around.  Which is good when you consider the lawnmower debacle...


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For a number of reasons, which include but are not limited to my own laziness, the willingness of others to complete the task, and a life course that took me from college to five years of shuffling between apartments in different parts of the country, I had never managed to mow any lawn between 1997 and 2011.

When we moved into the house last month (and before the move, and after the move), I was incredibly worried about having to mow the lawn again.  The gap in completing a task that is ingrained in the mind of any warmblooded American male as an incredibly warmblooded American male-type thing to do, to be frank, made me feel pretty damned impotent - it was like because I had gone so long without doing the task, that some window of grasping how to mow the lawn had passed and I would never be able to learn for the rest of my life.

(NOTE: I use the word "impotent" metaphorically, but the metaphor I think is clear - many men need to know they can perform as men, and you can fill in the task with whatever you're thinking of, but that's a fact.  There's a reason that Viagra commercials involve getting things done - an act is an act, whether it's sexual or not, and while sometimes a cigar is a cigar, most of the time a rowboat is not a rowboat.)

(A SECOND NOTE: I concede that the idea of there being a developmental period where it's easiest to learn how to mow the lawn is fucking stupid.  But every dude that's in my position would also concede that they wish they'd learned these tasks as a child, because then they would always remember how to do these things.  Blaming the parents, as always, is the easiest way out.)

The key to mowing the lawn for the first time was obtaining a considerable amount of help.  (Getting this help led to a far more positive outcome than the night before, when I tried to add fuel to the mower by myself.  The details are irrelevant here, but suffice it to say the process didn't work, I got pretty angry at the fuel tank, and ended up breaking a fairly innocent pair of sunglasses against the wall of the garage.)  Thankfully, my fiancee's dad worked with me for fifteen minutes to figure out how to add fuel to the mower for the first time, and watched me for another twenty as I remembered how to "draw lines" across the backyard, and reminded me that the grass bag needs emptying two or three times during the process.

This is not an isolated incident.  I'm speechless at the countless acts of kindness and patience that other people have lent us over the past month or so.  I'm a quick student but not a particularly patient one, so I don't know what I'd be able to accomplish without the help of more seasoned homeowners.  I have no way to repay my gratitude.  Anyway...

I certainly would recommend a Honda self-propelled lawnmower to anyone who is new to the art of mowing.  It doesn't really matter which Honda, although I suggest you pick the one that best fits the relative size of your yard (our land is about a third of an acre; we bought the $500 model which works just fine).  The instruction manual is eminently readable, actual operation is so easy that even a dolt like me got the hang of it relatively quickly, and it's a Honda so it's reliable and fuel-efficient.  However, filling a lawn mower with fuel must require a Ph.D. or something, because it took me forever to figure out how to get gas to come out of the fuel tank.

Back in 1997 (why, back in my day!), you took a funnel, stuck it into the mower's fuel tank, and poured gasoline from your rusted metal tank into the mower that way.  These days, I guess to make fuel tanks safer and also more obnoxious, the plastic tanks have a plastic nozzle that you have to prime (think Shake Weight). After you're done making obscene sexual gestures, you then insert it into (think of whatever you want) the mower's fuel tank, so that air is able to escape the plastic tank while the lawn mower is being fueled.  I think - maybe - I have the hang of this now, but I recommend having someone on hand who knows what they're doing while gassing your new Honda lawnmower for the first time.  It'll save you time and effort, and quite possibly, a new pair of cheap sunglasses.

(This will be what our backyard will look like by mid-June.  Just keep repeating this as a mantra...)