"Ron Hardin" wrote in message
...
madgardener wrote:

and they say women don't like power equiptment............GBSEG when
yer
done, I have 1/2 acre that needs some brush work done..................
madgardener

New toys the other way...

Consider a scythe. I don't know about brush particularly but it's
entertaining
on grass, if you want to stroll around after dinner with scythe in hand,
and decapitate any English Plantain coming up in the lawn - touch it
with the huge razor-sharp blade and it collapses into a pile of
unconnected
leaves.

I may plant English Plantain so there are more of them to knock down next
year.

There are brush blades for up to a half inch diameter, though I don't know
if it's a matter of touching or whacking. I have one but no brush needing
whacking at the moment. Next month I'll venture into the back.

Apparently you need the soft steel blades so you can put spectacularly
sharp
edges on them. Seymour has high carbon steel, too hard; I got the soft
at www.scythesupply.com . The site has various essays that may appeal or
may
not. Their blades fit the Seymour snath if you shim them with a bit of
wood to level the blade, from the hole being a bit too small for the knob.

This huge old scythe with the grass blade does a great job on grass next
to
objects, to my surprise. Just insert the point between grass and object
(house, telephone pole ...) and move it forwards and away from object
and the grass falls over cleanly in a pile. I don't think you can beat
that
in satisfaction.

There's also grass that doesn't fall over; I haven't figured it out
completely.
You can take it out if it's tall, or if you make a slightly hard landing
on it
(no need to whack at any time) apparently to hit it nearer the root than
you'd
otherwise slide into it at. Other grass just falls over when you slide
into
it at ground level.

You can actually mow the lawn with a scythe but it would be a little slow,
and involve going over again. Areas I've done that way have no grass
additionally cut by a reel mower when I run over them, so it really does
it.

Just to say there's an entertaining alternative.
--
Ron Hardin


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.


one problem with my overgrowth Ron...........I don't have lawn. I have a
slope that bottoms into woods below the house. My woods on the east side are
poison ivy, poison oak, 13 foot privet, wild blackberries and raspberries,
Virginia creeper which I do love, wild Japanese honeysuckle everywhere, and
a swing blade wouldn't make a dent in my mess. I was just being cute with
LeeAnne. If my woods were less formidable, I'd allow the grasses to grow,
but I don't HAVE grasses. I have weeds and vines and all sorts of
nightmarish things to deal with that I'm unable to deal with. I don't
barely have grass growing in the paths between the raised perennial beds.
And I don't have a front yard either. Just a shared driveway and a front
perennial garden with islands of soil and reseeded annuals and a few stray
pasture grasses and some bermuda thrown in for aggrivation. And the bermuda
refuses to grow where those tiny little islands are in front of the beds and
pop up in the loose, rich soil of the raised beds, of course.

You made a wonderful point though, and rather eloquently, I might add!
cudo's fer ya!
madgardener who questions the "yard" and land she's faced with more every
day.