I am a yard work virgin. Well, not exactly a virgin…I’ve mowed the lawn before…3 times. Ok, 2 and-a-half.

My husband and I moved to his hometown of Tupelo almost a year ago and bought our first house. We are still learning the ins and outs of keeping up the homestead, including the yard. Our yard is not huge by any means, but it’s sizeable…especially for two people who don’t do yard work. My husband hates it. He has a dad that he could never please when it came to mowing the lawn, so he doesn’t have much experience. And I just never mowed lawns growing up. Too dainty, I guess.

Anyway, upon arrival in Tupelo, we took inventory of our equipment or lack thereof: no mower. A friend of Kurt’s dad graciously gave us one. FREE! (The best kind.) However, we got what we paid for. It was also old. It is not self-propelled, and you can’t adjust the height any. Well, as new yard people, we aren’t concerned with having a stellar yard just yet, so we were more than thankful to settle for this old, free lawn mower. It worked well the first handful of times we used it, but it started to show its age quickly after that. It mows fine on a flat surface, a.k.a, the front yard. However, our back yard has a pretty severe slope, and the engine immediately dies on the hill.

But I think what finally killed the mower for good are the thistles in our yard. Like I said, we aren’t “yard people,” so we didn’t really notice the weeds taking over our lawn. One day I decided it looked pretty bad and needed mowing, so off I went. I wanted to surprise Kurt when he got home from work because I know he hates mowing.

There I am mowing along, pushing the mower over the weeds (some fairly tall) and something wet hits my face. I think to myself, “Did someone just spit on me?” I look around; no one is there. Then I think the worst and look above me for a bird flying overhead. Nope. Empty sky. Then I notice that my leg is wet too.

Then I realized: the thistle I just ran over exploded on me! I was immediately afraid that I’d have some kind of fungus or plant disease spreading through my system, but I kept mowing. My husband came home and relieved me of the mowing and finished the yard. The same thing happened to him: thistle juice to the face! So, we decided to call a local lawn care company and get a few weed treatments lined up before our yard became one big, angry thistle that spits on all passersby.

Soon our yard will be thistle free and much easier to mow. Now, if we can only get someone else to give us a mower upgrade for free. Any takers?