What The Lawn Is

Guys came today to mow the lawn.  One friendly, bald, tattooed gent suggested he’d be driving the mower while his thinner associate nodded under his cap and went to grab the weed-whacker.  I was a lawn mower for-hire once.  I offered them coffee.  “No thanks.  We got ours.”  And I suggested that if they needed to use the bathrooms to just say the word.

I have mowed this lawn once this year, just about in its entirety, before I conked the push-mower out, inadvertently catching a root.  My estimation for the time needed to push-mow the whole place was at least seven hours.  I was kind of enjoying the pace of a one-hour patch per day.   Go get sweaty and push the thing around in the sun, up the hills, into the wet spots.  There is nothing quite like hand mowing a lawn, strip by strip to develop and turf expertise understanding of just what the lawn is. 

I got them started, with some suggestions for where to concern their activities and set off for a bike ride not long after.  My daily route take just under and hour and by the time I got back the man on the riding mower drove my way as I walked my bike up the hill.   “Just the man I wanted to see.”  He explains what I already assumed, that the patch over to the north side of the house is too wet to cut.  The wheels sink in an he can’t get anywhere.   I get it.   I’ve did it myself two weeks ago, and even with a push mower it was very hard to progress in some patches. 

They worked for a little over two hours before they left.  It looked good to my eyes, though my wife said that they knocked over one of her lights and chewed up a few flowers.  And they were off before I could say: “thank you” or “good bye.”  And I calculated the cost that I’d negotiated ahead of time with their boss, who was running a business that needed margin to exist and considered how tough it must be to make a living mowing lawns these days.  Even with all the tools and machinery that I never enjoyed.  My memories of the trade were of securing funds to expand a record collection, not for sustaining one or more lives. 

Tuesday, 5/26/20