Recycled Gas Mower

Above is a picture of a formerly gas engine-driven push lawnmower that I am happy to announce I have successfully converted into a garden cart.

If you don't see a picture, it means I have not yet posted it. Taking photos and then running them through my computer takes a little time and effort that I am often slow to expend. But you get the picture anyway. It is simply a box mounted on a mower where there once was but now no longer is a gasoline engine.

You might say, "Well, regardless, what's the big deal? You already have not one but two fair-sized garden carts. You can't carry nearly as much stuff in your lawnmower contraption as you can in a regular garden cart."

That's true. But my mower takes less effort to propel, it goes in narrower places, I don't have to worry so much about it getting rained on, and the price is right. But mainly it's just the idea of getting some use of that mower that otherwise had just sat around with its infernal engine needing to be fixed for more than five years, but with me being unable to find any justification for getting it repaired.

Now, however, I'm getting a big kick out of this second life of the mower as a garden cart. I even love the clanky, clunky sound it makes as I push or pull it along, I think because all that creaking harmonizes so perfectly with the state in which I see myself as being, most of the time.

After the mower's engine stopped working, against all advice of my friends and neighbors I bought two identical electric mowers, and I have been quite happy with them ever since. Their advantages, despite my uneven country terrain, greatly outnumber those of a gas model. They're less expensive, they're quieter, they're easier on the environment and on poisoning me, they don't require any gas and oil all the time, and, best of all, they require very little maintenance, in fact, hardly any at all. And, unlike my experience with gas mowers, they always start up right away, even after long winter months of disuse. And the inconvenience of the power cords is negligible, since there are strategies available for that, and also I have two weed-whackers that I use in conjunction with the lawnmowers. The so-called "grass" around here, all of which showed up entirely on its own after I cleared things, grows VERY fast, tall, and tough.

Meanwhile, you might then ask, why do I need two weed-whackers, and two electric lawnmowers that are just alike, and two garden carts that are nearly identical, and two of so many other things?

It's because I fervently believe that a man should have two of everything, with the only exceptions being houses -- one is hard enough to keep up -- and, I suppose, wives, because of the logistical difficulties involved.