Trina Machacek: When I miss a week mowing and range cows

It’s a job, mowing my lawn. It’s a pleasure, mowing my lawn. It’s really a pleasurable job I look forward to each week, mowing my lawn. Then it rains. And rains. Oh, don’t get me wrong I enjoy every drip and drop of wetness that falls out of the sky. Not only does it make my nose happy with the fresh smells of sagebrush and ozone, rain washes everything.

Well unless we get what some of us call a 6-inch Nevada rain. Where it’s 6 inches between drops! We get that Nevada rain more often than a good, steady, all-day rain. The past two weeks though we were lucky enough to be in “the rain zone.” Every afternoon for 10-14 days we got rain. Which in turn made the lawn too wet to mow.

OK I could have mowed. I just got busy and poof two weeks zipped by. Then Sunday produced a beautiful sunny morning, so I went out to pretty up my yard by mowing. Do you know what else the rain brings besides water to your lawn? Ample amounts of nitrogen.

Nitrogen is like filet mignon to a lawn. The best food you can give your lawn is straight nitrogen. Just ask the grand farmers of Diamond Valley. Then do you know what happens when your lawn gets two weeks of free nitrogen on it from the rain? Really, really healthy and LONG grass. That’s what you get.

There was a commercial some years ago where the man of the house decides it’s time to work in the yard after taking a bit of time off. He opens the garage door, and his lawn has become a jungle. Complete with wild animals and man-eating plants that swayed back and forth.

Wagging leafy fingers for him to come out and play – if he dares to. Yes. That’s what met me last Sunday when I stepped out my back door after two weeks of not mowing and daily wonderful nitrogen-infused rain!

Somehow in the past month or two in my life I have been finding a crushing amount of things were piled on my plate. So going out to machete my way across the lawn was nearly more than I was ready to swallow. Then I remembered this little tidbit of advice I have been told a time or two. Every day, every task, everything that is asked of you is like eating an elephant.

At first it seems impossible to accomplish. But! HAHA Yes, an elephant sized “but.” If you just take one bite at a time, pretty soon you make your way all the way to the tail end. Great advice, right? There are three stages to making my yard all pretty and sharp looking.

I like seeing everything all done. There’s the mowing. Then the sweeping, (not my favorite part). And the trimming. I can trim then mow and then sweep. (Again, not my favorite part of the whole process) Or if I am feeling a bit pinched for time I will just mow and sweep.

That was the plan Sunday. Mow, sweep and move on to laundry etc. etc. etc. We all have long lists of etcs.! So, I began to mow. And I mowed and mowed. I gave much thought to going to the neighbors and renting some of the Merino sheep being raised across the fence. After mowing it was time to sweep up clippings. Not my favorite part. Did I tell you that?

Suffice to say I am very lucky to live where I can deposit my clippings in an area where range cows can eat until they get their fill. So, the six, yes six, loads of clippings were deposited where the cows, when they saunter by, would find an amazing pile of grass to chew cud with.

I’ve told you all of that to tell you about range cows. In Nevada the range laws says it’s up to the landowner to fence OUT the cows put out on range in the summer. I know that. I have known that for many years. However summer and open range sneaks up on me. Every year.

I put my clippings across the road for the cows that would sooner or later find my offerings. It just so happened that I went to town for dinner that evening and left, of course, my gate open. Couldn’t be time for the cows to be out yet, or could it?

Well of course it could. By the time I got home no less than 35 momma and baby cows were mowing my new mowed lawn. Didn’t even touch the piles across the road. Live and learn Trina, yet again.

Trina Machacek lives in Eureka. Her books can be purchased on her website www.theeurekacountystar.com.