There’s a reason there aren’t many greeting cards with lawnmowers on them.

The first guy who mowed the lawn likely did it as a prank and the prank got out of hand.

The lawn was not a priority on the farm.

My father was a farmer with little interest in doing anything involving the lawn.

He jumped at the chance to repair a lawnmower, but was not thrilled with its usage.

We mowed the lawn so we could see any insurance salesmen who were trying to sneak up on us.

Our lawn was in a gated community.

There was a fence around the yard that provided a home for lilacs, peonies and a shifting roster of flowers of various colors and varieties.

We had to have a fence. If we didn’t the lawn would have been mowed by geese or goats.

That would have been all right by me.

I had no desire to get a tattoo that read, &uot;Born to Mow Lawn&uot;

To my mother, mowing the lawn was as welcome as flowers in June.

June was our goat.

Mom mowed with a fervor and zeal that leveled any flower that had the misfortune of being planted in her path.

This caught us all with our plants down.

As a teen, I would get that current events quiz from my father.

&uot;When are you going to mow the lawn?&uot; he’d ask.

We had a push reel lawnmower.

It had rotating blades, but no motor.

No smelly fumes and no danger of flying objects being propelled at a high velocity by mower blades.

The gentle whirling of the blades was a sound of summer.

We could mow early in the morning before the heat and the humidity became oppressive.

We could mow without the noise bothering the neighbors; none of whom lived close enough to be bothered by our noise.

The mower was like a piece of exercise equipment advertised on one of those late night TV

infomercials. The only difference is that the push lawnmower actually works. Pushing it burned 400 calories an hour.

A person could sleepwalk while taking a new mower for a test push.

I didn’t stand in line to use it.

Sometimes I just wanted to watch the parade in progress.

I had no dreams of becoming a gold medalist in the lawnmower Olympics.

I’d rather have left skin on a hot playground slide than mow the lawn.

The smell of a freshly-mowed lawn is enjoyed by many. Fresh air is fine as long as you don’t inhale.

I thought mowing could be done other ways that would be more effective and much less work.

Methods like putting a lightning rod on a stack of dynamite piled on the lawn and then waiting for a thunderstorm.

I liked mowing in the fading light of day. That way I couldn’t see what grass I’d missed.

Mowing was reel hard work.

Then we got a self-propelled mower.

A mower with a motor.

I thought it’d be a great addition to the family’s fleet.

It was the closest thing we had to a motorcycle, pontoon or motor home.

I looked at that mower like primitive man must have looked at fire.

It wasn’t a push mower; it was one you walked behind.

It was far from new.

Who knew how many families had toiled with the mower before it came to be in our possession?

The motorized mower was a great disappointment to me.

It was lacking in grace, skill and charm. It was an arrogant contraption. It didn’t always run. It didn’t like the attention. It still wasn’t any fun mowing the lawn. It was even less enjoyable because the noise of the engine prevented me from hearing the songs of the birds.

Robert Frost suggested that we take the road less traveled.

So I decided to put the mower on cruise control. I tied it to a stake.

It went around and around in ever-shrinking laps as the rope wrapped itself around the stake.

I didn’t make crop circles.

I made lawn circles.

I had proven once again that while I might not have been the brightest crayon in the box, I did

have the occasional bad idea.

It was while mowing the lawn that I decided that I wanted to get married one day and have a family.

I wanted to have a son.

One who would mow the lawn.

(Hartland resident Al Batt writes a column for the Tribune each Wednesday and Sunday.)