The kindness of strangers

After our anonymous neighbor sent us a postcard about our lawn and I got over the inital outrage and then laughter at the man's expense, I sighed and thought that well, maybe now's a good time for a new lawnmower, since we have a small reel one that is dull and can't handle tall grass and I hate mowing the lawn more than I ever have before.

The kids and I got an electric mower today - the Black and Decker that was a Consumer Reports best buy. I thought it would fit in our trunk. It might haveif the box weren't just a half an inch bigger than the opening of the trunk. It might have fit in the back seat, but my kids are little and need to be in the back seat.

I was about to return it and then call a friend to come get it when it was convenient for her to squeeze it into the back of her minivan.

Now this sounds like I'm just stupid, but a woman was going past just then and was going to help me get it in and offered the back of her pickup. She followed us home and we unloaded it and I gave her a bottle of wine (one I hadn't tried before and it was fairly, ahem, inexpensive, so I hope it was drinkable). Total stranger, a woman who was probably 50-ish years old, reminded me a bit of one of my coworkers, who would do that sort of thing, too, I am sure.

Of course, I was required - by the kids, but also out of curiosity - to try it out as soon as we got home, so I did a small section. I kept almost running over the cord - it's going to get some getting used to. It was only about 90 with sun beating down at 1 pm. It was a very small section. The kids were very, very excited by the bag. I'd rather leave the mulch on the lawn myself, but hey, they got to see the clippings.