My New Toy
Following on from an interesting conversation about Peak Oil and manual tools started by Earthpal over at The Coffee House (’Renewable Energy: the power of the human body‘), I started thinking about how I could reduce my use of powered tools around the house. At this time of year, one of the most frequent routine tasks is mowing the lawn. My 20-year old electric rotary mower is still going strong, but I haven’t got a clue how much energy it uses in its dotage, and it’s a heavy beast to use. With fond memories of the sound of hand mowers whirring lazily in the afternoon sun, I bought one of these babies.
The Qualcast Panther 30 Sidewheel Cylinder Lawn mower is a thing of beauty. It’s as light as a feather for starters, which means you can literally lift the whole thing plus a full box of grass clippings with one finger. If you’re mowing after rain it doesn’t leave ruts on the lawn, unlike my electric dinosaur, which is nice for those of us who garden on heavy clay. And there’s no need for unravelling the cable, finding a socket, testing the circuit breaker and all the rest of the faffing about you have to do with a powered machine. And I don’t do my back in carrying it up and down the steps at the back of the house. And it does a better job in less time.
Go on, I dare you, buy one of these now. It’s £37.95 from Amazon, including delivery. It’s great fun and great value, they have zero carbon emissions, and you can mow the lawn during a power cut.
Pete Smith @ July 16, 2008
Had one for years. Love it. Never understood people using electric mowers. Stupid things!
Looks good pete. Great price too.
A bit off-topic but my little boy has been learning all about air toys at school and the kids were asked to bring some of their own air toys into school as an example of toys that use natural energy. My son took all kinds of stuff in . . a frisbee, a helicopter, a kite, a rocket launcher. He even took in a boomerang that his uncle brought him back from Australia. His teacher told me the kids loved playing with them all, as if it was a novelty for them to actually play with toys that don’t light up or make noises and don’t require batteries.
Anyway, lovely garden there Pete. When is this rain going to stop so we can enjoy our gardens that we work so tenderly on?
Thanks for the kind words about the garden EP. Since this is a post about a lawnmower, the photos deliberately feature the grass rather than the flower beds. It’s actually a very ordinary suburban front garden. I’ll rephrase that, it’s what WOULD have been a very ordinary suburban front garden in the days before everyone paved them over for parking.
Since I have a long-standing bee in my bonnet about this issue, I’m putting my money where my mouth is and trying to make it a pleasant space to sit in, rather than just somewhere you pass through on the way to and from the front door. It’s sheltered, secluded, full of colour (my red hot poker was a triumph this summer) and it’s quieter than the back garden, which suffers from constant noise blight from screaming kids on bouncy castles.
It sounds like my kind of place to sit.
I feel the same abut people who concrete their lawns to make way for their cars. What a shame. My husband once mentioned paving over our grass until I threatened to camp out on it every night with my protest placards - and make lots of noise. He soon came to his senses.
For years we ignored our front garden. Now it’s turned into a personal mission, almost a political statement, to reclaim that space as everyone else is abandoning theirs. It’s practical too; we live at the north end of a terrace running NNE-SSW, so we get morning sun in the front and none on the back patio. And because all our neighbours have built rear groundfloor extensions, there’s a weird windtunnel effect that makes it very blustery round the back, even in low winds. So the front garden is the place to be, an oasis in a sea of paving.