Looks like I may need a new mower.

As you can probably tell, my mower is overdone toast. A smoldering wreck. A shadow of its former self. Only a short time earlier the mower had a nice green hood over the engine, a steering wheel, a yellow seat, and tires.

My original plan had been to scalp the lawn in our front yard, to get rid of the tall, dead blades to prepare for new growth. I brought out the riding mower and proceeded. The grass was so tall that it made mounds of dry grass with each swath. I was plowing through the dry grass, pushing running over and pushing aside the piles.

After several trips down the length of the yard, I felt a lot of heat on my legs. I looked down, and flames were shooting up on either side of the mower.

I jumped off and ran with my creaky knees up the yard and around to the back of the house, where I store our hose. I dragged it down as far as it would reach, and quickly realized it was not far enough. I ran back up to the house and dialed 911. The fire truck arrived within minutes, and the fire fighters began spraying. They brought it under control pretty quickly.

You can see the fire fighter spraying into the edge of the woods around the yard. The fire was spreading pretty quickly through the grass up the slope of our yard, but, fortunately, only barely edging into the woods around the yard. I think we have had enough rain lately that even despite a few warm, sunny days, the leaf and pine needle litter in the woods was damp.

The burned area reached about halfway up to the house. I could probably have kept the fire from reaching the house using our garden hose, but it would have been risky. I’m glad I didn’t have to find out.

One of the fire fighters said they would normally not drive their truck, all 40,000+ pounds of it, up our driveway, but they wanted to make sure they could protect the house. I told him I would not complain if they cracked our driveway.

And then they drove up to the top of the driveway, turned around, and were on their way.

It was an exciting afternoon. Leah was worried, almost to the point of “sick.” Our big dog, Zoe, apparently went crazy in the house. I didn’t have time to worry or go crazy. My hands still show some black from helping move the fire fighter’s hose around in the yard, despite washing several times, and my knees are a little more stiff and sore than normal, but aside from that, we all seem OK. We have had a little rain tonight, probably just enough to keep any stray embers from igniting. The grass will probably look better in the burned area, but we may lose some pine trees. If you notice in the first photo, the trunk of one pine is charred up quite high. That shows how high the flames from the mower were.

Way back when I was trying to decide what to plant in the front yard, I chose Zoysia because although it is normally mowed quite short, it can also be allowed to grow. If it grows without cutting, it makes a thick, lush lawn that dogs love to lie in. The down side is that cutting all that growth in the winter produces huge quantities of dead, dry grass that piles up as you mow. Now I’m having to rethink the whole concept of infrequent mowing. I’m afraid it will mean mowing about every two weeks, possibly more often, to keep the grass short enough to make the winter scalping safe. And that means a new mower.