It's April!!

The day before yesterday I did something that I am loathe to do.  I mowed the grass.  It wasn't even April and I mowed the grass.  I'm disgusted with myself.

We don't really have a yard, we have a field.  Mowing is not something to be taken lightly, not something that can be done on a whim, knocked out in nothing flat.   It has to be done with a riding mower (the trusty old John Deere), and you're gonna be out there the better part of the afternoon. And our property is not flat - in fact there are places where it is quite steep, but yet there is grass to be mowed.  I refuse to buy a push mower, and weed eaters long ago got the best of me.   So, there are places where I am extremely careful, not wanting to find out how heavy a John Deere riding lawn mower might actually be.  

I subscribe to several schools of thought on mowing grass.  

The first is "Never mow grass before sometime in April" school of thought.

The second is the "When it looks like it needs to be mowed, wait another week" school of thought. Events may force the issue, and that's what happened this time.

The third is the "If you miss it this time, you'll get it next time" school of thought.   I never see any reason to alter this.

The fourth is "Never use anything like weed & feed" school of thought.  This is because if you kill all the weeds, you may not have any green left.   Besides, I'd have to buy tons of the stuff, and that aint gonna happen.  I set my mower blade setting pretty high for the same reason - it hides the weeds, and I find I don't mow any more often than the people who cut it down to the ground.

So, it had been raining all week & the grass loved it.  It was to the point where it needed to be mowed, and my tendency is to wait another week after that. That would have put it well into April, and let me keep my self-esteem. BUT, more rain was predicted.  That was the problem. Monday was a beautiful day, warm, dry-ish (for North Carolina), and rain was predicted for later in the week.  

I cannot mow when it rains. If the grass gets way too high, and way too wet, it'll never dry out and is a pain to mow.  I was afraid this would happen, so I mowed.

I broke my first two rules.  

The mowing season has begun, an I really don't like to mow grass.