Yes, of course, feel free to question my sanity.

I have several weeks been trying to get my lawnmower to work. This is the one I bought about a year ago that has an electric starter. Well, the electric starter went South some months ago, but it had a back up pull cord that worked OK for awhile. Now the thing just won't start. I've changed the oil, changed the spark plug (twice). Today I will empty the gasoline tank with the old fuel and put in some gasoline fresh from the service station, to see if stale fuel is the problem. I fear stale gas is not the problem (at least not with the lawn mower), and I will have to take the mower to the shop. That will cost not only money but a lot of time.

As I was dealing with this problem yesterday, I remembered a Glenn Reynolds post about his purchasing a push mower. Great idea! No gas, no spark plug, no oil, no noise. So off I went to Home Depot and bought one.

Fortunately, it was quite late in the day when I brought the box with it home (oh, so light!), assembled the handle and connected it tothe base unit (oh, a marvel of engineering!), and started to push. And push. And push. Ugh! It was hard! But the sun was on its way down, and so I soon had to stop. That was a good thing, because it was a work out. I should have gotten ready with a strict, six-month kettle bell regimen. But I didn't.

Maybe it will rain today.

Inner Gardener Update. This is the second weekend of my getting in touch. More high tech highlights to report.

I discovered a great lawnmower shop on 79th Street near Biscayne Boulevard, Joe Blair Garden Supplies, Inc. Miami folks will recall the location as the heart of what has become "Little Haiti". The Haitians definitely upgraded the neighborhood, in my view at least, when they began moving in 20+ years ago. Before then it had become a prostitute ridden, dangerous place. (When Macon was first born, we bought baby furniture from a store in that district. The store, "Holland's Babyland", had been there for a generation. The proprietor, a stubborn man who was a member of Central Baptist Church, had refused to move out. He was murdered in that store a few years after we shopped with him.)

I found the lawnmower shop on the internet, and I called yesterday morning (a Saturday) to see how late they would be open and to discuss my need for an edger. A lawn edger, in my experience, is a thing almost as big as a lawn mower, with a pretty serious Briggs & Stratton engine and at least three wheels. You walk behind the thing, and its perpendicular blade, spinning like crazy, throws dirt, rocks and grass out in front, about a half a block. It makes a great little ditch next to the sidewalk, giving all sorts of satisfaction that males need.

Anyway, I had not seen one of these things at Home Depot, so I decided to call around and see where I could find one. Dave Blair took my call and said that homeowners were really not buying them anymore, and that they were only being bought when you had miles and miles of sidewalk to edge. Instead, he suggested I look at a two-cycled engine sort of thing that is like a weed-eater, except it has an edger device on the bottom with a single little wheel. Actually, it sounded a little effete to me, but Dave was so thorough and impressive on the phone, that I went up to 79th Street to see the place.

Wow. This place was something. I think every professional yard man in North Dade was in an out of there during my visit. There was not only Dave, but also his sons (who are in the photo on the website) and a bunch of other people who worked there. They had a huge inventory - mainly directed at the pros - and a big maintenance section. Dave is about my age and told me that the shop was on its third generation of family ownership (he was in the second). He went to North Miami High, graduating three years after I graduated from Hialeah. He treated me as if I was the only guy in the store, in between greeting people by name as they walked by. (Note: the "professional yard man" in Dade County tends to be either black or brown. Dave is anglo.)

Dave sold me my edger in two pieces. (Its a Stihl product) The first piece is the engine, the second piece was the attachment for the edger. You can take the edger attachment off and use several other accessories: a weed-eater, a chain saw, a blower. Amazing. (I just got the edger.) But it was a 2 cycle engine. Those things don't have a good history with me. (I can't get the darn things ever to start). Here more progress has obviously been made. Dave put the pieces together for me, added some fuel, took me outside and we cranked it right up.

But would this relatively light contraption still enable me to throw rocks, dirt and grass a half a block or more ahead of me as I walked down the sidewalk? And would we have a nice, deep, black ditch running along the sidewalk? Yes! I am happy to say. Yes!

How Does Your Garden Grow? We have been having our yard "done" by a particular family for at least 30 years, off and on. They are the Everetts, and they also "did" my parents yard. We have seen at least three generations go by. I think its the third actually doing most of the work right now, with a second generation person or two doing the supervising. The adults have other jobs and its a part-time thing. I think the Everetts used their yard business not only as a means for extra income to their big family, but also as a way to teach the younger generations about work, doing a good job, being faithful They cut everybody's yard in the Springs, I think. They are a fine family. About a year ago several of them visited my mother at Epworth.

They do an "all right" job. Not the way I would do it. Lately they have been coming on Friday, when Carol and I are still at work, rather than on Saturday. On Saturday, I could talk to them easily, but now its an effort to hunt them down on Saturday. (Often we go weeks without seeing them, and then I finally hunt them down to give them a check for all the times they have done the job. They know I will catch up with them.) They literally skin the yard, and over the years I have asked them to cut the grass higher, and that works for awhile, and then they are back to skinning it. They are really dangerous with a weed eater. "Yard work" doesn't have to be perfect, as I used to tell my sons, which is advice they took to heart big time. On the other hand, there is a threshold below which it hurts me to see the quality fall. It hurts me to see our skinned lawn.

So I proposed to Carol that I do the yard work for awhile. This time she did not object, as she usually, sensibly does. I think our skinned lawn is hurting her too. So she does not object to my getting back in touch with my inner gardener, and we went to Home Depot and bought a lawnmower and a weed-eater, after consulting Consumer Reports.

As with Ham Radio after years of absence, I found that lawntool technology has advanced since the last time I was in the gardening business. The main lawnmower advance is an electric starter. This is a great thing, and removes an impediment to Carol getting in touch with her inner gardener, she promises.

Our lawn is at a sort of nadir. Not only has it been skinned within an inch of its life, the workers who are building the addition on the back of our house have destroyed our sprinkler system. So whatever the Everetts have left of our lawn has been drying up and only weeds are surviving. Its a terrible thing to see. (Coincident with our visit to Home Depot, however, the spring dry season appears to have broken; we got a huge thunderstorm yesterday and there is more rain to come.)

CT has a review of a book that offers a sort of theology of gardening. Maybe mowing the lawn has a sort of spiritual aspect to it. It would not surprise me. (Mike Maris probably has an opinion in this respect.) I've always enjoyed cutting the grass and anything else vegetative and alive within reaching distance of an ax, saw, machete, or hedge clippers.

As to the Everetts, I will keep close watch on how much I will have spent in re-equipping the tool inventory. When I've gone enough weeks without paying the Everetts to make up for what I have invested, I will look at the question again. As in years past when I tired of my inner lawn worker, I may hire them again and give them all the lawn tools I collected and feel really good about cleaning out space in the garage, as I get in touch with my inner garage cleaner.