September 2019
Mowing Pattern
I love mowing the yard. I always have and I take great pride in getting it just right.
There is a pattern to how I mow the yard, I call it the Union Jack pattern, because of its similarity to the British Flag. I've cut it this way since 2014. Below is an overhead shot of the house and most of the front yard.
Now, if you laid a great big 150 foot Union Jack over the front yard and the house, it would look like this:
And if the flag were transparent down to 10%, we would have a clear picture of the mowing pattern:
This is pattern 1. The lines show how I mow back and forth across the entire yard, even into the parkway. I align it with the three sidewalks in front of my house. It takes about 5 strips to get the lines straight. Each pass you must concentrate on straightening the line out, not just following the previous line or by the time you get finished, the lines will be quite wavy.
Pattern 2 is a diagonal which I line up at a joint in the driveway and my neighbor across the streets leftmost parking spot in his carport. I use Pattern 2, the next mowing after Pattern 1, then 3, then 4. So, you can see the entire pattern is achieved during the month.
Pattern 3 starts when I stand on the manhole cover (out of view on the right side of this photo and go straight as a laser to a tree in my neighbors yard across the street on the lower left.
Finally Pattern 4. It's my least favorite pattern because it's the hardest. The passes are shorter and there are more of them. It's more work and keeping the lines straight is really challenging on this one. I don't have a lot of alignment to work with, just a part of the sidewalk going out of my front door and a granite sidewalk on the side. The whole left side is mostly left to eyeballing it, which keeps getting lopsided.
So, you can see how it all comes together. I'm going to have to take a photo now of the grass, showing the pattern instead of just telling you how it should look.
Maybe some day, I will do something like this:
There is a pattern to how I mow the yard, I call it the Union Jack pattern, because of its similarity to the British Flag. I've cut it this way since 2014. Below is an overhead shot of the house and most of the front yard.
Now, if you laid a great big 150 foot Union Jack over the front yard and the house, it would look like this:
And if the flag were transparent down to 10%, we would have a clear picture of the mowing pattern:
This is pattern 1. The lines show how I mow back and forth across the entire yard, even into the parkway. I align it with the three sidewalks in front of my house. It takes about 5 strips to get the lines straight. Each pass you must concentrate on straightening the line out, not just following the previous line or by the time you get finished, the lines will be quite wavy.
Pattern 2 is a diagonal which I line up at a joint in the driveway and my neighbor across the streets leftmost parking spot in his carport. I use Pattern 2, the next mowing after Pattern 1, then 3, then 4. So, you can see the entire pattern is achieved during the month.
Pattern 3 starts when I stand on the manhole cover (out of view on the right side of this photo and go straight as a laser to a tree in my neighbors yard across the street on the lower left.
Finally Pattern 4. It's my least favorite pattern because it's the hardest. The passes are shorter and there are more of them. It's more work and keeping the lines straight is really challenging on this one. I don't have a lot of alignment to work with, just a part of the sidewalk going out of my front door and a granite sidewalk on the side. The whole left side is mostly left to eyeballing it, which keeps getting lopsided.
So, you can see how it all comes together. I'm going to have to take a photo now of the grass, showing the pattern instead of just telling you how it should look.
Maybe some day, I will do something like this: