We have a push mower to mow our small lawn. While I know that it doesn’t provide the “best” cut for the grass, it does work for us- no carbon footprint, great exercise and easy to store and move up and down the steps. A beautifully cut grass done by 2-cycle engine does set off a flower bed but I am not willing to give up the benefits of the push mower. (As a disclaimer, we do have a gas engine mower to use exclusively during the fall when our neighbor’s honey locust tree drops an incredible amount of needle-like leaves- designed to not be raked or picked up by human hands.)

As I was mowing our front lawn I was musing on a comment a friend had remarked. She and her husband live in a row home not far from us. Her front lawn is truly the classic postage stamp size- very small square. Push mowers are quite practical for those types of homes- easily portable and store well. If you live in the middle of a row home not on the end unit, one either has to take the lawn mower through the house to get from back to front or walk all around the block in order to mow both the front and back yards.

For many years, her husband used to mow the grass with a push mower. Whether or not they regularly had the blade sharpened, I do not know. Only after he would mow the grass would she comment, “Congratulations, you just ironed the front lawn.” The mower and his subsequent walking would push down the blades, only to pop back up a little while later.

I have noticed that there are certain blades of grass that stubbornly will not be cut by the push mower, or at least not on the first pass. I find that I have to tackle it by passing over that spot in a different direction.

Recently I was spray painting a found wicker chest. Our one neighbor was getting rid of it and it is a perfect size for our beach deck although it needed a coat of white spray paint. I soon discovered that one can was not enough- to provide the best coverage, I needed four! Anytime I spray paint a piece of wicker, I am always amazed at the surface area and the amount of paint one needs. It is not enough to make one pass at it. I have to paint it numerous times from different directions and angles.

It made me think of how we manage problems or difficulties. Sometimes we need a new way to tackle a situation. Trying to solve an issue in the same manner as we have always done, might not work. We might need to start looking at it from a different angle. We might then need to tackle the problem in a different way or from a different direction and make multiple passes to achieve a solution.

I am wondering if that is not the same with the police/Black Lives Matter movement. Certainly we cannot respond in the same way as we have always done- we need to look at the problem of injustice, privilege, safety, law and order from a different angle. Perhaps we need to try a different approach like learning more from a different point of view. Not that we have to embrace that viewpoint, but be open to understanding or learning more. As I say about health care decisions, getting another medical opinion or more testing doesn’t mean that one is going to go down a certain plan of care, it just means that one is getting more information for a more informed decision.

What about you? How are you in looking at difficult situations or ongoing problems? Do you find yourself in a rut? Painting the same area over and over yet leaving other areas uncovered? Are you ironing grass?