If you go back one step in the gallery, you also find the solar-powered rechargeable electric mower (it also plugs in to recharge, if necessary)

We currently have an electric, but the motor just burned out, leaving us in need of something new for at least the rest of the summer. The electric has been nice, but having the cord has been a pain given the number of trees, shrubs, flower beds, and other obstacles in our lawn. The rechargeable mower Nick mentioned sounds quite promising, and would be a lot less of a pain. Kyle Hosker also mentioned the Neuton CE 5.2 battery powered mower over in a comment on Facebook. There are obviously some options to look into.

The idea of renting/borrowing goats, rather than actually keeping them, is actually quite appealing. Then the vet bills, etc., etc., could be someone else’s problem, and we can just feed them occassionally :-).

Lambo: Propane? That would be a change. I’ll leave you alone now since you’re in the middle of moving across town, but I’ll definitely plan on bugging you for that in a month or so.

My long term plan has always been to essentially eliminate the yard altogether. The city definitely won’t be happy if we have 3 feet tall prairie grasses all across the lawn. We could try to replace it all (or large swathes of it) with buffalo grass, though, which doesn’t grow very tall and wouldn’t require much cutting. The big issue there would be the weeds and native plants that would try to come up through it, but mowing/pulling/weeding a handful of dandelions might be less annoying.

Or we could just go for those miniature high grassland terriers. I kind of like that idea :-).

How about not having a traditional yard? Can you do that? Some cities get wierd about one having all natural prairie grasses instead of turf. Or you could do like they do in the southwest; put down pea gravel. Pave your yard. Not into pavement, then you could put down that recycled plastic stuff they use on playgrounds. Just trying to think outside the box here…