Personally, I like a nice lawn. I enjoy mowing the grass. It’s something I used to despise as a youth. I’m the oldest son and mowing the lawn with the old manual reel mower was my job. It was a hot sweaty job and if I missed a week the lawn got really tall which made the job even tougher. As I got older if I was at home, I would stop by my parent’s house and get to work mowing the lawn. Not with the old reel mower. I think they got rid of that when I moved out of the house and the job went to my younger brothers, but with a more manageable power mower. The one I have is battery powered, which makes it quiet enough that if I wanted to make this a surprise, I could likely mow the lawn without them hearing it and be done before they knew I was there.

One thing many people forget to do with their lawn mower is sharpen the blades. Blades that are sharp cut the grass better and leave the grass looking clean and green rather than leaving having a brown cast to the lawn. There is another possible gift for dad, a free lawn mower blade sharpening.

It's also the time of the year to apply that first round of fertilizer to the grass, if it hasn’t been applied already. For most lawns that would be 1 pound of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet of lawn. In the absence of a soil test for the lawn, I would recommend applying a turf type fertilizer, most of them will say for lawns on the package. If the phosphorus and potassium levels are high enough already in the soil, then applying a fertilizer with nitrogen only would be the best option.