The owners of the house we rent in St-Rémy bought a robot lawn mower this year. Every couple of days it would emerge from its hidey-hole and wander around the yard while our dog looked on suspiciously. It kept the grass nice and short.

Then one day I noticed that the lawn had transformed and was now quite lush. It was as if someone with a crew cut had suddenly become a long-haired hippy.

It seems that our robot had gone on strike.

It had not presented us its demands, so I enlisted the aid of our owner, a former diplomat, to try to negotiate a settlement. He did his best, but after several unsuccessful forays, we determined that negotiations were useless.

Extreme action was needed! We consulted the owner’s manual.

The good news was that it had instructions in 18 languages. The bad news was that they were incomprehensible in all 18.

This led to Plan B: randomly pushing buttons on the robot’s control panel. I know, I know, it’s a very guy thing to do, like banging on the side of a balky appliance. It never works, but at least it makes you feel better.

As expected, the robot was unimpressed and continued its strike. I thought about asking government officials in Paris to intervene, but they were too busy arguing among themselves to help.

The work stoppage continued.

With the robot remaining hors service, and house guests arriving soon, it was time for Plan C: Keith mows the lawn. Either that or we would need to give our guests machetes.

I fired up the mower, an electric one, and off we went, plunging into the lawn and then…stopping.

Due to a wet spring, it was full of dense clover, which had grown to a height of four inches. This is much harder to mow than grass. There was a lot of starting and stopping as the mower became jammed over and over.

Finally, partway through the job, the lawnmower’s batteries ran out. Cutting through all that clover took a lot more energy than usual. Our lawn ended up partly cut, partly lush, with random tufts here and there. It looked like a haircut given by a blind barber.

I sure hope the robot strike ends before we’re back in St-Rémy next spring.