Me and my electric mower...

One other new habit I picked up from my time in Germany was mowing with an electric mower. I just came in from mowing my front lawn and had my four year old shoot this pic with my redneck hat and all. I picked it up at the local Bi-Lo for $1.99. I thought what a bargain and it will help this transplant New Yorker blend in here in South Carolina. I think the electric mower gives me away though, and yes that is a 100 foot cord you see slung over my shoulder. My neighbor from 5 doors down stopped me once while mowing and asked "Hey will that cord reach over to my house?" All kidding aside the reason I opted for this is I hate the smell of gas mowers and mowers aren't the most efficient things on gas I read somewhere once that gas mowers burn through nearly as much or more barrels of oil as our cars on the roads do. Every weekend, about 54 million Americans mow their lawns, using roughly 800 million gallons of gas per year according to the EPA. Here's a site if you want to find out more about the mower thing. It is where I got my facts for this post and the cute graphic below.
By the way there is a rechargeable battery version of the electric mower now which I wish I had purchased instead because when I moved down here the house I was renting had a much smaller lawn and I was used to the plug in kind, not to mention it was cheaper. Oh well live and lawn (learn, ha ha). And yes I know about the push option I actually bought one of those first but it broke after my first row of cutting at the rental house and my lawn now is way to big for that. My goal is to landscape the back more with shrubs and ground cover etc. so the mowing is kept to a minimum. Keep going green! Just don't stain your good sneakers with the grass too much...

Also the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states, a traditional gas powered lawn mower produces as much air pollution as 43 new cars each being driven 12,000 miles.