Suburbia: Why Can't Everyone Mow the Law at the Same Time?!?

…because it’s unrealistic, that’s why.

Still, I swear that there’s an unwritten rule out there that, in suburbia, at all daylit hours, a lawnmower or weedwacker must ALWAYS be running, preferrably within 2 houses of mine. And on the fastest, loudest setting. And I hate wearing earplugs, because 1) white noise drives me nuts, and 2) I need to keep my ears attuned to the phone.

I’m sick with a head cold, so I’m doing my legal research from home on the computer today. Yet every time I try to start typing, SOMEBODY turns on a lawnmower. My own mother just did this an hour ago. (I’d tell her to stop, but she’ll either ignore me or forget that I asked her to stop.)

I swear, suburbia is an endless cycle of people turning on their lawnmowers. When one person stops, another has to start. When I get my own home, I’m only mowing when someone else is. So there.

And kudos to whomever invents the silent lawnmower. That person will be an engineering genius and a borderline demigod.

Lawnmowers: fuck 'em.

It’s not like that in my neighborhood. They’re not going all the time - when I leave the house, nobody mows their lawn. However, when I come back, cook dinner, and head out to my deck to enjoy dinner al fresco, all neighbors within 3 houses all start mowing their lawns.

They’re also able to sense when I have a big deadline, and need to get a lot of work done.

I love living in the country. My lawn always maintains community standards, because I am the community and I set the standards. The damn cows don’t care how their pasture looks, though.

A dude in my friend’s neighborhood ripped up his lawn and put down lava rocks.

So I’m not complaining about the lawn mower noise.

“I mowed the law, and the law won.
I mowed the law, and the law won.”

You forgot the unwritten rule that says that someone in suburbia, usually real close to me, especially on a Saturday, must operate his lawn mower or weed eater between the hours of 7 and 8 in the morning when I am trying to sleep, especially on cool days when I have my windows open and a/c off.

I’ll see your lawn mower and weed eater and raise you a leaf blower.

i would have sworn this was a Surreal post! :smiley:

(them letric ones are quite!~)

Apparently there is an unwritten rule in our neighborhood about lawns. We start to mow our lawn, then, when we are halfway finished, neighbor A across the street starts to mow his lawn. After two passes, the neighbor to his right starts mowing his lawn. While neighbor B is picking up clippings (get a bagger for gosh sakes!) the next door neighbor © starts mowing her lawn. Then, the next morning at 7AM the neighbor to our right (Neighbor D) mows, uses a weed eater and the blower.

Happens every week. Neighbor B is new, (as is neighbor C). Old neighbor B would birng out a lawn chair and watch me cut the grass. Freak:rolleyes:

Lawn mowers cannot compare to the racket raised by leaf blowers, may they and their lazy-ass users burn in the fiery pit.

By the way, there is a pretty much silent lawn mower - the little solar-powered model that runs by itself much of the day, controlled by guides at the edge of the lawn area to keep it from chewing up more than it’s supposed to. Costs two grand or so, but it’s quiet.

And if everyone mowed their lawn at the same time, you’d be turning blue from all the polluting exhaust. Mower engines are very dirty (compared to car engines).

Ornamental grass, that’s the ticket.

Most hardware stores that I’ve seen still sell the old-style, human-powered, rotary drum lawn mowers. Those are practically silent, if you’re inclined to use one. I used one all the time on our sizeable lawn in Cleveland, and it worked about as well as the power mower.

Thank you all for reminding me why I live downtown.

Don’t know about you folks, but around my place, almost everyone has hired the same gardening service to do their lawns. So the lawns do get mowed at about the same time. :slight_smile:

(I’m the exception, though, since I mow my own lawn)

I have heard on several radio rants that the reason lawn machines are loud is because people will not buy them if they are quiet. They think loud noise = much power. So in order to get quieter lawn machines on the market you must change the public perception.

I couldn’t find anything on snopes about this, so I have no cite one way or the other, sorry.

Aw, you folks would love me as a neighbor. I mow every other week.

I hate cutting the lawn. I inherited the (not-so-)vast wasteland of monocultural green out back and I despise it.

Why is mowing the lawn somehow seen as a morally upright sign of a man of good faith and the American Way, anyhow? I’m currently working on turning the green stuff outside into mostly garden beds (my dad, in his time, talked often of paving the whole damn thing and painting it green). But my mother gets on me about “being so lazy I’ll do more work to get out of cutting the grass than I’d do just cutting the grass”.

HUH?! I’m double-digging about 70% of a 75’x25’ yard to put in flower beds! Yes, it’s more work than cutting the grass. Yes, maintaining that garden will be more work than cutting the grass. So how is it lazy to trade an activity I despise for an activity that I like but will expend more energy on? Especially when the more energetic activity will not only provide visual and olfactory pleasure but probably raise the value of the house as well?

Society’s obsession with decorative grains is seriously fucked up…

jayjay

I love this idea. No more mowing, and your lawn doubles as a tennis court.

I moved from Manhattan to suburbia 4 years ago. I’ll take the lawnmowers (and leaf-blowers) over the daily 2:00 am garbage pickup at the nursing home across the street, the nightly car alarms going off, the buses idling at 5:00 am, and the police and ambulance sirens any day. But that’s another rant hehe.

*It’s just another Sunday morning in suburbia,
Only the sound of mowers, to disturb ya,
And houses full of people who’ve never heard of ya,
But you’ve never heard of them, so you call it quits,
But it gives you the shits,
When you’re in bed on a Sunday morning and you’re making it
And the woman next door is moaning, but you know she’s faking it,
And they’re playing that record again and you feel like breaking it, but…

It’s just another Sunday morning,
Just another Sunday morning,
Just another Sunday morning in Suburbia,

You’ve been trained, not to complain,
When other people’s details become a drain on you,
So I think I’ll turn my radio up
And have another coffee from my favourite cup
And act like I really don’t give a stuff and I’m having a ball,
Cos after all,

It’s just another Sunday morning,
Just another Sunday morning,
Just another Sunday morning, in suburbia*

Apologies to John Malcolm for probably mangling his song because I’m going by memory.

I can mow any time I want, even at night. I don’t mow at night because I can’t see the extension cord.

Yes I have an electric mower and it is a little louder then a fan so the noise (and pollution) does not bother anyone around here.

Now for real noisy yard tools, try a snowblower. You need them up here in the great white north (of NY state). I have run mine after midnight, was working nights and had 5 + inches of snow in the drive and a 3 foot present from MR Plow. And yes, my community does allow snowblowers to be run at all hours, when it is snowing. Think that getting everyone to mow their lawns at the same time, try getting everyone to use their blowers at the same time.

Back to the mower noise, try electric. It is quieter and move the point of pollution from the mower to the power generating station.:smiley:

How about this: In our old neighborhood we had a deaf family, the Schwartz’s that lived in the could-e-sack across the street. The parents were both deaf, their kids had perfect hearing. Mr. Scwartz would get on his riding mower at around 9:30-9:45 P.M. and rev the old sucker up. He would always manage to drive over some branches which would A) Get snagged in the blades and B) Make this horrifyingly loud crunching and whanging sound as they went under the blades.

Then after he was done cutting the lawn he would open his garage door and play with his power tools, (power saw, chain saw, various drills) for about an hour.

Sometimes this was on weekends, sometimes on weeknights.