Your first lawn mow, and the bald stripe the whole street can see

The job

Mow a quarter-acre yard, front and back, for the first time. Make it look like somebody competent lives here.

How the rookie does it

1:40 p.m., Saturday, July. The rookie notices the neighbor's lawn looks like a putting green and his looks like a hayfield. He decides today's the day. It's 94 degrees.

1:45. He wheels out the mower the previous owner left in the garage. Nobody knows when it last ran. Possibly a different decade.

1:52. He pulls the cord. Pulls it again. Pulls it eleven more times. He learns the word "choke," and the mower teaches him what it means.

2:05. He finds a gas can in the corner. It smells like old varnish. He pours it in anyway, standing in the garage, next to the water heater.

2:20. It starts in a cloud of blue smoke that makes the dog leave. He sets the deck to the lowest notch, reasoning that if he cuts it really short, he won't have to do this again until September.

2:21. A stripe of the front yard goes from green to dirt in one pass. The rookie calls this "a fresh start."

2:30. A loud crack. The blade finds the dog's rubber bone, hidden in the tall grass since spring. Rubber shrapnel hits the siding. The rookie ducks two seconds late.

2:45. He mows the shady corner the sprinklers soaked an hour ago. Wet clumps everywhere. The deck clogs and the engine dies. He reaches toward the chute. From the porch, his wife asks, calmly, "Is that thing all the way off?" He stops. He pulls the spark plug wire. She was right, and she didn't even look up from her book.

3:30. Done. The stripes are diagonal by accident and also somehow curved.

Wednesday. Every grass tip has turned a ragged white-brown. The bald stripe is yellow. The neighbor gently asks if he's got grubs.

How the veteran does it

Walt, three doors down, has mowed the same lawn for thirty years. Watch him once and it'll save you a summer.

He waits until about ten in the morning, after the dew burns off and before the heat shows up. First he walks the whole yard with a bucket: two sticks, a tennis ball, a sprinkler flag, a dog toy. He puts on boots, safety glasses and earmuffs. The grandkids are inside.

He checks the oil on the dipstick. He fills the tank out on the driveway while the engine's cold, with gas he bought this month. The blade got sharpened in April, like it does every April.

The deck's set at three and a half inches. He measured that once with a tape from the ground to the blade, because the numbers on the height lever aren't inches.

He trims the edges first so the mower picks up those clippings. Then he runs one lap around the perimeter for a turning lane, and mows straight passes, each one overlapping the last by a few inches. Last week he went north-south. This week it's east-west.

Clippings stay on the lawn. He blows the ones on the driveway back into the grass, not into the street. Then he unhooks the plug wire, scrapes the deck clean and parks it.

Forty minutes. Iced tea on the porch by eleven. The lawn looks better on Wednesday than it did on Saturday.

What the veteran knows

1. Never cut more than a third of the blade at once. If the grass is six inches tall and you want three, take it to four today and three later in the week. Scalping is how a lawn turns yellow and weeds move in.

1. Mow high. Cool-season grasses like Kentucky bluegrass and tall fescue are generally happiest around three to four inches. Warm-season grasses like Bermuda and zoysia run shorter. Look up your grass type. Taller grass shades the soil, holds water and crowds out weeds.

1. A sharp blade cuts. A dull one tears. Those white-brown tips are torn grass. Sharpen at least once a season, and again if you hit a rock. To take the blade off: disconnect the spark plug wire (or pull the battery on an electric), tip the mower with the air filter and carburetor facing up unless your manual says otherwise, wedge a block of wood to stop the blade turning, wear gloves, and mark which side faces the ground. After sharpening, balance it on a nail. An unbalanced blade shakes the whole machine. A small-engine shop will do it if you'd rather not. A bench vise and a good file are on the list in Ten tools that cover ninety percent of household repairs.

1. Walk the yard before every mow. A blade throws a rock, a nail or a chunk of toy hard enough to break a window or an eye. Keep kids and pets well away or indoors. Wear closed-toe shoes, safety glasses and hearing protection.

1. Nothing goes under the deck while the engine can start. Not a hand, not a foot, not a stick. Shut it off, wait until the blade has fully stopped, and pull the spark plug wire before you clear a clog. The blade keeps spinning for a moment after you let go of the bar.

1. Gas goes stale, and it's flammable. Use fresh gas, roughly a month old at most, and add fuel stabilizer if the mower will sit for a while. Fill it outdoors with the engine off and cool. Never refuel a running or hot mower, and store the can away from anything with a pilot light. Why your garage filled up, and how to get it back is worth a read before you find that spot.

1. Dry grass, cooler hours. Wet grass clumps, clogs the deck and makes slopes slippery. Midday heat stresses the lawn and it stresses you.

1. Slopes have rules. With a push mower, go across the slope so the machine can't roll back over you. With a riding mower, go straight up and down. If it's too steep to stand on comfortably, use a string trimmer or call a pro. Never give a child a ride on a riding mower, and look behind you every time before you back up.

Your first time, done like a veteran

• Find the manual online by model number and read the safety pages.
• Check the oil level before the first pull.
• Use fresh gas, and fill outside with the engine cold.
• Measure the deck height with a tape. Start at three inches or higher.
• Walk the yard with a bucket and pick everything up.
• Put on shoes, glasses and ear protection. Bring kids and pets inside.
• Mow dry grass, mid-morning or early evening.
• Make one perimeter lap, then straight passes that overlap by a few inches.
• Leave the clippings on the lawn and blow them off the pavement.
• Put blade sharpening on the home maintenance calendar every spring.
• Borrowed the mower? It goes back with a full tank, a scraped deck and no grass caked in the wheels, even if it came to you half empty and filthy.

That last one matters more than the stripes. Return a mower better than you got it and you'll never have to buy one. Return it with an empty tank and you'll hear about it for thirty years. Walt's still talking about a guy from 1998.