The Way I See It...

Publisher's Letter 

Robin Rogers, Ed.D.

July 2025

In my spare time, I love to mow. My family jokes about my next career in landscaping. Recently, my oldest daughter bought her first home, and until we find her a mower that’s “just right” for her, I will lovingly load my prized possession (a 48-inch Husqvarna) onto my other prized possession (a 10-foot trailer that my kids bought me for Christmas), drive the three miles to her house, and mow her yard. If I’m feeling spry, I’ll weed-eat, rake, and blow her porches, too. But just as soon as I think, “I could make a career out of this,” I’m reminded of my greatest fear: snakes.

A couple of years ago, I was riding my mower, and I noticed a snake slithering through the grass. Instead of running over the snake immediately, I drove around and got closer, trying to see it better. I could hear two different voices ringing in both ears. In my right ear, the hiss-terrically humane said, “Don’t kill good snakes; they eat the bad ones.” In my left ear, the reptile reaper said, “The only good snake is a dead snake.” I was honestly frozen with fear, and instead of pushing the gas to the blades, I just watched him slip into hiding. I wondered if I might be a Buddhist for about half an hour that day. Then, for the next few months, I wouldn’t take the trash to the curb without wearing jeans and boots.

Last month, just after we had gone to press, I made sure I had nothing to do on a Monday except get a massage. I was worn out and super excited about 90 minutes with my phone off, my headphones on, and a person squeezing the knots out of my shoulders. I slept late, showered, and took the extra time to shave my legs so the masseuse wouldn’t be grossed out by my prickly legs. I was ahead of schedule (not a normal thing for me), and the day was mine to relax. I had my playlist picked out, and all was right with the world. I grabbed my purse, a Yeti cup of ice water, and my keys. I walked out the front door and almost immediately stepped on top of the biggest, longest, most terrifying snake, sunbathing on my porch. I stopped and pivoted so quickly that my Yeti spilled into my purse. Back into the house I ran, where I felt stranded. I dropped my handbag and dug for my phone. “Snake identifier. Snake identifier. Take the snake’s picture, Robin,” I thought. But Mr. No-Shoulders was already on the move—into the Asian jasmine, a groundcover that runs the length of my house, where any snake could stay hidden for years. I paced back and forth. There was no way I was going outside that front door any time soon. The massage would have to wait.

After half an hour of getting up the nerve, I went out the back door and got a shovel and a rake. I carefully approached the front porch and made banging noises against the sidewalks. Nothing. Maybe I scared it off . . . or maybe it was still hiding in the jasmine. That jasmine has been around my house as a groundcover for many, many years—way before I bought the house. I hate it. It’s like a weed in that once it’s growing, it’s almost impossible to kill, and it’s ripe for snakes to hide.

But I was determined. I ran to my garage and jumped onto my trusty lawnmower. The jasmine was flourishing; it was at least six inches deep and felt like a squishy mattress when you stepped on it. I didn’t know if the snake was in there, but if so, he was going down. I put the blade settings on 1, the closest to the ground, and I went where no mower had gone before—the flower beds.

After mowing back and forth repeatedly through the side beds, I moved toward the beds closest to the front porch where I originally found the snake, and I went forward until I hit the house. As I put the mower in reverse to drive back over the jasmine, I realized that my back tires were stuck. The back tire was spinning—and I hadn’t even mowed down the majority of the greenery near the exact spot where the snake had been. What if the snake was still there? 

I was stuck, and I knew I would have to pull the lawnmower out with a tow rope. I prayed that my enemy was long gone and jumped off the zero-turn with haste.

I got a tow rope and hooked it between my mower and my car, and as I drove away from my home, the mower moved behind me. What was left of the groundcover could be whacked with my weed eater.

No snakes could be seen, and finally, I felt like I could go in and out of the front door without being completely terrified. I drove to Home Depot and bought close to $100 of mothballs and Snake-A-Way. By the time I got home, it was dusk, but I was determined to put the deterrent around the exterior perimeter of my house. 

If you have read this far and now you’re mad at me because you know that mothballs don’t actually deter snakes, but they do deter or harm mice, rats, skunks, moles, birds, and possibly household pets, stop. I didn’t put them out.

Mothballs create a vapor that deters small animals, and if the small animals leave, the snakes don’t hang around because there’s nothing for them to eat. It sounded like a great plan to me. I only wanted to scatter them close to the house where my daughter and I move daily.

But as I opened the first package of mothballs, I noticed a new bird’s nest in the crape myrtle right by my front door. A robin was sitting on her eggs. I, your Gardening Gandhi, took exactly one second to put the mothballs back in the box and carry them to the Waste Management bins. If, by chance, that snake got into that tree and ate those eggs, so goes the circle of life, but I wasn’t going to be responsible for a robin and her babies not getting a fair shot. Plus, the fact that the bird was a robin seemed like a sign. I decided to live and let live.

In spite of feeling spry at 55, I have decided that I may not have a second career in landscaping and mowing after all. 

This month’s magazine is full of interesting people my age or older who are pursuing their passions with even more gusto than me on my mower. I hope you find them as inspiring as I do. As always, thanks for reading FSLM.