December is dead lawn time in Victoria especially if one lives in the bush on a finite water supply.
So mowing in December is not required our lawn time is about April, September. Also agree with others that lawn mowing is best done nude as with all gardening activities.
Like your post naked Texans, we employ the same in Aus. All ablutions water ends up back on the garden and as for dead soil, chicken shit, horse stable muck out and mushroom growing mulch is available by the truckload around my farm property all 3 of which work great on restoring dead soil.
I think we are all basically on the same page here.
We get a lot of rain in my area of the world and the house is surrounded by rain barrels to store and warm it up for the drier times. I do have a lawn around the house, but the primary motive for doing that is in case of forest fires. A green area surrounding the house is the best way to protect it from fires.
As far as revitalizing poor soil, the best solution is compost. Even a 1" layer of compost added per year to poor soil adds a lot of humus. Planting cover crops that have deep roots and add nitrogen to the soil (I like clover) is also good.
well ... we did some naked yard maintenance this morning. We put it off til after 9:30 am. It was cool outside ... 47 at 9 am. We waited til it jumped up to 51 and slipped on some minimal clothing til about 10 when, after working in the sun for about 15 mins ... we got too warm in the clothes we had on and shed them.
I did some ladder work early cuz I was covered and the neighbors were out doing some yard work. After I was done with the ladder work, it warmed up enough and the clothes came off! Easier to work around the huge rose bush with the flannel shirt and sweat pants on! hahahahahaha