Mowing the Grass

Almost cut my lawn. It happened just the other day. It was getting kinda long.

But I didn't. And I wonder why. Guess I felt like letting my freak flag fly.

Yesterday I finally got myself together. And got down to it. I couldn't put it off any longer. My new lawn-mower sat there in the corner of the back-yard mocking me. Sat where it had been since being parked there over two weeks ago after we bringing it home and not even trying it out.

It just sat there taunting me, making fun of my laissez-faire attitude towards yard maintenance. "Toro," it teased. "Toro, toro." My freak flag had been replaced by the image of a big red cape, egging me on. Just like in the 'Bugs Bunny' cartoons. So I got up, yanked three times on the rope and fired that baby up. Time to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Now, please understand - I try to be a 'fair' man and a pride myself on knowing good character when I see it. I don't judge a lawn by the length of its blades of grass. Or by the unkempt fringe along its perimeters. Or by the weeds it may attract.

But I'll tell you this - when I do get out of that vinyl-strap fold-up chair and push a big hunka set of rotating blades on wheels around my yard, well, that grass had better damn well look like it has been cut when I'm finished. I'm not one of these modern 'progressive' yard men. When I cut a lawn, it's gotta look cut.

Not like when my teenage son does it. The other week I gave the boy five bucks and told him to go do a lawn cut. An hour later he comes in and says he's done. I look out the window and ask, "Done what?" And he says, "I cut the grass." I look out again, rub my eyes, give my head a shake and I says to him, "Oh yeah - and which ONE did you cut?!"

Kids today. Some day they'll realize that there's no better feeling than looking upon a vast panorama and the scent of a freshly shorn lawn. One that you have mowed yourself.

I KNOW that feeling. But I don't know it often. Once a lawn is cut, I don't really feel like doing it again for another month or so. I like to be able to gaze upon my handywork and savour the view as long as possible. After about three weeks of appreciation, it will rain for a week straight and then the grass will shoot up five inches overnight and I have no choice but to cut the damn thing anyway. Time marches on.

Until yesterday, for the past 30 years, my instrument of choice was a rotary-blade push mower. It was powered not by gasoline or electricity - but by good old-fashioned human propulsion. Putting one foot in front of the other and then repeating that process, you got behind it and pushed. It was a 'Yardman.' Top of the line some 50 years ago when rotary-blade push-mowers were all the rage.

But through a bizarre series of circumstance, I have recently come into possession of a gas-powered machine. I'm not one to look a gift goat in the mouth. It's a 'Toro' - top of the line. The self-propelled 'Personal Pace' model. Meaning that you barely have to touch it to get it moving. You could cut the whole lawn pushing that mower using just that one muscle in your baby finger.

It's also a lot more complicated than my old 'Yardman.' Turns out there is a device on the wheels so you can adjust the cutting height of the grass. And it turns out the previous owner apparently liked a bit of length to his lawn. He had it on the 'high' setting.

The result being that when I had finished, unless you had actually seen me at it, you wouldn't even know that I had just cut the grass.

So I had a little look-see, realized my oversight in not making the proper adjustments for a lower cut, and then sat down with a bottle of pop. I'll be damned if I was going to mow the damn lawn again. It had its chance. It can wait another two or three weeks.

But the more I looked at it, the more I came to like it. All the tall spindly crab-grass had been cut down. All the weeds had been levelled to the same length of the rest of the grass. In short, it looked pretty damn good. It looked like a lawn that wasn't yelling out - "Hey, look at me! Look at me! Like my new haircut?!"

And that reminded me of an old episode of 'The Andy Griffith Show.' Floyd the barber is telling Andy about one of his 'sharp' customers, a wealthy out-of-towner who once came in and when asked if he wanted the 'works' or just a trim, the fellow replied that he wanted "a haircut that doesn't look like a haircut."

Well, of course, being a proud practicioner of the art of tonsorial care, Floyd is astonished at such a notion - "Can you imagine that?" he incredulously asks Andy. "Getting a haircut - and not caring if everybody didn't know that you just got a haircut?! ... Say, that's class."

And that's what my backyard now looks like. A lawn that doesn't look like it was just cut. Mind you, it's neat and trim. The blades of grass are a uniform two inches tall. And you would never know that I had just cut it the day before. Now, that's class.