For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for June 25, 2023

I wonder if the previous owners of the Pattersons’ house also had that bothersome rock when it came to mowing the lawn.

That’s a bit bigger than a rock. “The next time you find a boulder…..”

I can’t help but wonder how close they are to Oak Island.

Rocks migrate to the surface all by themselves. Especially in country that was once glaciated. like Ontario where the Pattersons live.

People pay really good money to have rocks like that placed in their landscaping. They should have made use of it.

John is actually mowing his own lawn instead of making Michael or Elizabeth do it??

Will wonders never cease??

they could plant a shrub, or maybe build an altar & worship the Mother of All Rocks

It’s a wise farmer that learns to plow around the rock.

From Lynn’s Comments: Once again, this really happened. Having a comic strip to fill every week made some calamities a GOOD thing! Real life gave me a constant source of maddening incidents that I could turn into funny.

Probably a piece of a mountain that no longer exist from Northern Canada. Scraped and carried down during the last Ice-Age. Then left behind as the Ice-Age glaciers retreated.

May one suggest you just rip of all that turf grass and plant a native plant meadow instead?

Raise the blade…

xeriscaping?

Pennsylvania?

I’ve dug up so many rocks I have a terraced hillside. For the ones needing a backhoe I just use a sledge hammer and break off the top.

He should be grateful he is not in the Ozarks.

What a great idea, about a day late.

Shovel enough to get a good bit of the boulder exposed. Hammer drill holes as deep as possible in it. Fill holes with water. Wait for freezing temperatures and Mother Nature will crumble the boulder for you. With granite or other hard rock, you may need to hammer an iron, lead or steel plug in the holes.

Try living on a Sandstone Bluff, nothing but rock, except for the sediment coming down the hill, so where I have grass the dirt is only about 1 to 3 inches. Mowing for me is precision mowing, and yes, I go thru a lot of blades. I buy them three pairs in an order.

Our neighbor never raked the small rocks out of his yard like we did. Every time his mower hit a rock he would shout: Hot dam! Ke-rist!

John had to work hard remove that boulder. That is his penance for having impure thoughts about Rhetta.

Elly made a valid suggestion, John. The shrub would have been cheaper.

That is why there are so many stone walls in Ireland. You have to do something with all of those, as you plant your fields.

Some C4 would clear that up

He got rid of that rock. It would be interesting to know what he did with the next one.

“In Sod we trust”. A down-to-earth sentiment.

Back about 30 years ago my next door neighbor(we lived in Northern Michigan) decided to cut down a wild cherry tree that was right on our property line down. This being the second time he decided the best way would be to cut out the roots. Some 18 hours later-all day Sat and into Sunday afternoon-the hole was about 4 feet deep and 12 feet wide with several roots, some up to 6 inches thick were fully exposed. I loaned him my chain saw and after sharpening it a couple of times he was finally able to cut through the main root, the rest took him until after dark to cut. Since I worked midnights I spent a few hours on Monday shoveling the dirt back into the hole and planting a large Lilac bush. There was another, much larger cherry tree-about 25 feet tall-growing in his back yard that he had also planned to cut down. After discovering just how large the root system was he decided to just leave it be.

It could have been a fossil, we’ll never know

rocks are pretty mobile. I live in the mountains. I’ll mow across a little rocky flat area one year and the next I have to mow around it. They rise up a little at a time.

Glacial erratic. ☺

It’s called “Project Creep” in the construction business. This one was huge. LOL…

My fix at my previous house involved a sledge hammer to take a few inches off the tops of rocks too large to roll with a come a long. Smaller ones got added to the nearest stone wall/pile.

I have a friend who grew up in the Netherlands. He claim s that there were never any rocks in his yard. His wife would declare with sadness that her childhood summers were spent picking rocks from the family garden.

All others buy grass

Sorry Elly. A shrub requires root room. With the size of that boulder underground, a shrub wouldn’t take root unless it was about 4 feet away.

Hey Cru-Elly, next time the lawn needs mowing, may I suggest YOU do it!?

I friend loved to tell the story of a relative finding a large boulder when digging a basement. They dug below the rock and sunk it deeper.

Ok, this is really stupid.

I love the license on the flat bed!

It’s a shame that John didn’t read Bozo a couple of days ago (https://www.gocomics.com/bozo/2023/06/23?ct=v&cti=2598252). He might have gotten a different perspective on this situation.

why didn’t he hit it every other time he mowed ?

I live in a rock-free area of Louisiana. I have a gumball tree, whose lawnmower-killing roots slowly rise out of the ground like a super-slow-motion Kraken. I added dirt until the problem vanished.

You will fetch her … a shrubbery.

Makes me wonder if John ever mowed the lawn before.