Phew! You think you've got problems, I've just admitted on a gardening forum that I've bought a Mountfield lawnmower. You should have heard the Hayter boys - kept on about how their mowers have more horsepower and their blades are much sharper. That provoked an arguement with the traditionalists who fiercely maintain that their old-fashioned hand push Ransomes give an almost indefinable quality to the cut, which results in a better striped effect that is more pleasing to the eye.
A Qualcast user really wound up the Hayterites by claiming that although the centres of their lawns were O.K. the edges were badly defined. They hit back with claims that their
L series blades were the sharpest on the market and that the grass boxes on the Qualcasts were too small. One guy with a Flymo tried to join the debate but they all laughed at him and said flymos were O.K. if you've just got a window box but
real gardners would never use them.
I shut them all up when I posted some pictures of my lawn. They couldn't believe that you could get such an even cut from a rotary and one even remarked at how green my grass was. They were also gobsmacked by the straightness of my lines and were amazed that I'd cut it at midnight. One of the large format ride-on brigade claimed that his Honda had better low light performance because it produced less noise and got quite upset when he heard that I'd also cut my neighbour's lawn - apparently amateurs like me should stick to just mowing our own lawns for pleasure with our "toy" mowers and leave the paid jobs to the "real" gardeners like himself who had the professional equipment.
At that point I logged off and went out to cut my lawn for a while in the evening sunshine whilst I listened to the birds in the trees and watched the flowers gently waving in the breeze. To me, that's what gardening is all about - not what tools you use. I hate to think what they'll say on the forum when the find out I've bought a Spear and Jackson
E-Series spade for my vegitable patch!