Doing Grass

Those of you who ever drove past our house in Charlotte know that I was perpetually locked in battle with our lawn - an implacable, inexorable enemy that knew not defeat. Every week I would struggle out into the impossibly hot, wretchedly muggy North Carolina summer air to fetch my loyal, battered gas mower. Together, we would quixotically tackle the broad, coarse weeds that pass for grass in North Carolina. Several hours, one severe case of dehydration, and at least one gas refill later, the grass would be (generally) shorter - but I would be beaten in both body and soul.

And then, three days later, the lawn would need to be mowed once more - a vegetable insurgency that refused to accept my claims of ultimate rule.

There are men (and women, no doubt) in suburbia whose lives revolve around the pH balance of their lawn. Those people would be crushed if their once-green lawn wound up brown and lifeless - for me it would be a crowning triumph. People used to laugh when I told them I was trying to kill my lawn, but what they didn't realize was that I wouldn't just like my lawn to die; I would welcome its death in the style of a hip-hop mogul, with celebratory bottles of Cristal, powerful handguns, and the purchase of SUVs with improbably large rims.

When we moved to Seattle and bought a house with a tiny postage-stamp of wispy, feeble grass, I immediately forgot the lessons of Charlotte. We wouldn't even need a gas mower, Leigh and I reasoned - why not buy one of those old-fashioned push rotary motors that would take up less space in the garage and wouldn't pollute or require us to store gasoline?


On the left, beauty; on the right, madness.

If the idea was to be environmentally friendly, the rotary mower certainly accomplished the task. It was positively chummy with the various flora that make up our lawn. It would greet each tuft of grass, gently caressing it and perhaps rough-housing it a little before moving on. Never did it actually, you know, cut the grass. Why, the very thought!

All of which, of course, explains why we stuck with the rotary mower for more than a year. I would go out for periodic but ineffective mowing sessions that invariably ended with the gently massaged wildflower stalks waving goodbye to me on my way back in. To achieve any success at all, I would have to approach a given meter square of lawn from five different directions and at varying speeds. I wasn't so much mowing the lawn as I was trying to give it a particularly ragged haircut.

Now? Ah .... now things are different.

Leigh's father Lyle, a kind and gentle soul who was no doubt weary of my unending assaults on his daughter's ears about the utter worthlessness of our mower, recently decided to give us a gas-powered mower as an impending baby present.

This isn't just any mower - it's a big-engined, self-propelled Toro. This is a ridiculous degree of overkill for our lawn, but I can't pretend that I don't derive a great deal of satisfaction from it. It's a bit like nuking the Sorth Pole to eradicate a slightly disgruntled penguin colony. And I love it.

Thank you, Lyle - not only have you aided me in my grim struggle with lawns everywhere, but I'm sure the neighbors want to give you a medal.