Our view from Iowa has a lot of green lawns out the front window. Glenn mows his every three or four days. Seems a bit much. I mow mine once a week. It takes about 45 minutes. I don’t have a riding mower. I wonder how far I walk each time. Is there an easy way to find out? Am I a nerd for wanting to know? Yes.
I could carry my GPS unit. Or, clip one of those step monitors onto my belt. Those would work. Instead, I used our blueprint, Google SketchUp, and a calculator. Here is the blueprint view showing our property dimensions, house outline, and driveway. I drew in the sidewalk out front and where there are trees in the woods out back.
I pasted this image into the software SketchUp so I could scale it according to the dimensions in the drawing. Once the software knew the scale, I drew some blue polygons in the areas that have grass to mow.
A right click on the polygons brings up a calculation of the area of each in square feet. I added the three areas together to get 4734 sq ft of lawn.
I figured my mower cuts a swath about 1.5 ft wide on average. By dividing the area of the lawn by the mower swath I got the distance walked.
4734 sq ft ÷ 1.5 ft = 3156 ft = 0.60 miles
Our View From Iowa 
You need to get one of those automatic mowers, like a roooooomba for the yard.
Remember, the guy next door had one where we lived before. It had a buried wire around the perimeter of his property to keep it contained. It did a ragged job. But, it was fun to watch as it wandered around. He gave up on it after part of a year.
Maybe we could get some goats and sheep.
There ya go!
Glenn gets more exercise than you, Jim, unless he uses a riding mower. 🙂
He does most of it riding.
You’re gonna outlive him, Jim, and what use will his neat lawn be to him then?
I’ll report in after my next mowing over the weekend. I do ours every 7-10 days and walk not ride. Our lot is an acre and about a third is lawn, but there are gardens, bushes and trees to mow around.
Aargh. I did the lawn and forgot the pedometer.
I suspect there will be another opportunity. 🙂 We got 1.3″ of rain this morning. I can almost see the grass growing taller.
And I believe that is heading our way. Rain coming in tomorrow morning and right through the day Tuesday so, yep, there will be another chance for me to totally forget.
Been there…done that…many times.
Reminds me of a time a few years ago when we moved out of a town house into a single family dwelling for the first time in awhile. I needed a lawn mower so I asked a colleague at work what brand he owned. His response was instructive. “I don’t know,” he responded. “It comes on Saturdays.” Well, mine now comes on Wednesdays. Lesson earned.
Yep. I will be checking out one of those models in a couple of years. I hear they don’t even make you break out a sweat.
Nerdiness is a cool thing these days…basque in it! 😀
You need more native ground covers that don’t need mowing 🙂
I think I enjoyed the comments as much as the post. Well, I mow a good 3 acres, most by riding. I have to use the push mower in some places like the ditch. Then there’s the trimming that really sucks! Around the house, the trees and shrubbery, the barn, chicken house, fences and fence posts, and the ditch where I can’t mow… Great post!!!
I’m glad you liked it. It was fun and quick. Funny how a post you work on for a long time can sit without much activity. One you do in 30 minutes can be popular. Go figure.
The mowing and trimming would get old very fast for me.
I love what you did here. Clever.
Finally…I sort of remembered the pedometer. I did part of the backyard before starting it, but can safely assume an approximate. It registered 6675 steps and 2.7 miles. The back is not terribly large, but I think it’s reasonable to round up to 3 miles. Not bad. If I did it every day I’d be in pretty good shape and we’d have the trimmest lawn in town.
That is a long way to push a mower. Do you feel it is fairly accurate? Maybe you could plant some prairie and have lots of flowers to photograph each year.
http://bit.ly/1KQjXkR
We have already added a few flower gardens in the front and back yards and along the driveway. Mowing around them probably adds a bit extra. I’ve felt like your picture a few times..except for the barefoot part.
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