My lawn looks good. Not great. But good. I don’t know if it will ever look great. I certainly don’t think it will ever meet the standards of my neighbor whose turf looks like it was transplanted from a P.G.A. golf course. Every blade of rich, dark green grass on their lawn appears to be at exactly the same height. I have seen only one dandelion in the yard since spring. It was there for about 11 hours before my neighbor removed it with some type of dandelion extraction tool that looked really cool and really expensive. And that is the secret to the success of their yard – they spend lots of money on it. Which brings me back to our humble lawn. We don’t spend lots of money on it. So when I say it looks “good,” a more accurate description would be to say that it looks somewhat green in most places, and very well watered. Both of these things can be attributed to the above average amount of rainfall we have experienced this season, and through no extra effort or expenditure on my part. In terms of the “weed factor,” if I was to borrow my neighbor’s apparatus and set about to removing all of our dandelions and various other weeds, I fear we would be staring out each day upon a rather arid brown and dusty landscape with a patch or two of greenness. But, overall, and from a distance, and particularly on those days when it has just been mowed and the dandelion heads are removed temporarily, it is a fine lawn.
Mowing is one of the things we do well and with consistency. I say “we” because my wife often mows the lawn as well as myself. Until very recently, we had two operational push mowers and could divide and conquer the project together. A stubborn carburetor issue with one of the mowers has put our system on hold for now, but we continue to share the chore with the one operational machine. In previous years we always used a bag for the lawn clippings, but the bags are somewhat pricey, and the process is longer, so we began letting the clippings fall where they may this year. A friend who owns a lawn service told me that this does, in fact, help the lawn to grow stronger and healthier by providing a compost for the soil and additional moisture between mows. He could be right. Whatever it is, the lawn looks pretty good.
And that makes me happy. I like to look out upon my freshly cut lawn. I like the smell of the cut grass. I enjoy the tidy look of the rows that are left by the mower. And I take pride in knowing that our property looks good. Our property. That we own. Well, technically I suppose the mortgage company owns it for another decade or two, but that is a minor detail. We consider it ours, and I like knowing that it looks good. It is amazing how much the property around a house can effect the overall look and feeling, and what is called in real estate circles the “Curb Appeal” of a property. Something as simple as a well cut lawn can really make a difference.
And this is a truth I discovered long ago. One of my first jobs was as a “lawn boy”. It was a position that I was volunteered into by my parents. Once I was seen around our small town mowing one lawn, it was amazing how quickly my services grew to other customers. Looking back, it may have been because I charged five dollars, regardless of the size of the lawn, or it may have been my parent’s secret ploy to keep me away from the Atari gaming system with those addictive space invaders that had landed in our house. Whatever the reason, I soon had several “accounts” in my lawn mowing venture, and each one offered a blank palate, a chance at creating “curb appeal” by my efforts and mowing style. Only a few of my clients were particularly fussy or stringent about my mowing – and only one had specific requirements about which direction he wanted the rows, and where I should dump the clippings, and how to safely mow around the pool. He was one of those “lawn nuts,” the guy who would put up little flags warning pet owners of lethal chemicals awaiting urinating pets, and he would cordon off areas of his property with posts and twine while he raked, reseeded, or reinvented a portion of the grass in some way. He was also the only customer who insisted that I use my own mower. All of my other clients provided me with mower and gas. At the time, I thought this was because the guy was a cheap skate, that he wanted every last penny of his five dollars to be spent well. Now I realize it was because he did not want me touching anything in his garage. The garage was meticulous – a place for everything and everything in its place. The kind of environment that makes you nervous to touch anything, or move anything, or to be in for too long for fear that you will be held accountable for disturbing the order and control of it all. I also remember he had a large freezer in the garage, the kind where the top opens and you have to lean down in to retrieve your food. I always figured it was probably where he kept the bodies.
So, for the most part, I was left to my own devices during my mowing to create the landscape that I thought would best fit the house. And I took pride in this. In truth, I learned some things from the “lawn nut” and used them on my other jobs. I learned that grass grows better when you alternate the pattern of your mowing each time. So I would mow horizontally to the building one time, and then vertically the next, offering the owner a choice of styles each week or two. I had a few elderly clients, who seemed to enjoy my company and would invite me in after I was finished for a glass of lemonade, or iced tea. One sweet older woman had cigar boxes filled with photographs that she would share with me – she needed to share them with somebody, and most of her family and friends were not around. Some had died, others had moved away, and the remainder she had just lost touch with. Although I was young at the time, I remember thinking about the sadness of the situation, and sensing the bittersweet feel of this ritual we had. Her whole life was there in those boxes, and I wondered how often she looked through them when no one was around. She was in the stage of life where the best of times had seemingly come and gone, and now she was left to review, and retell, and maybe to regret some of those times. Her life story was quite interesting to me, actually, and I took some enjoyment at eating the cookies she would offer, drinking some ice cold lemonade, and hearing about her youth as a performer in an ice skating show. Her body may have been aging, but her mind was sharp, and clear, and we would travel together back to a time that sounded wonderful, and exciting, and much simpler than the present world. I always took extra time and care doing her lawn, and I refused any “tip” she would offer above the five dollar charge.
This was my first real exposure to people outside of my immediate family – a first realization that there are so many people, so many stories, so many differences in families, and preferences, and personalities, and customs. Before this, I had only really known my teachers and other kids my age, and my exposure to them was limited to structured settings, and maybe an occasional “play date” at another house. My overall view of the world and what was “normal” was primarily based on what happened in and around my own house. During my lawn mowing days, I saw people in their own environments, unfiltered. One of my jobs was a former teacher’s yard, and I could barely believe my eyes the first time I saw him wearing shorts and a t-shirt! I was embarrassed to look at him! The situation only worsened when, on one occasion, he was working on adding a deck to his house and he apparently hit his finger with a hammer. I heard the expletive he used above the sound of the lawn mower engine, and I was desperate to disappear, or to have him simply go away. Instead he danced around the yard for what seemed an eternity holding his finger and apparently screaming other obscenities at a volume that was mercifully quieter than that of the engine. I think every child goes through a similar realization to my own – a time when the light bulb goes off and it becomes clear that not everything that is said, or done, or used with regularity in your house is a universal practice. The realm of endless possibilities and countless lifestyle choices is suddenly opened up. For me, this happened while walking back and forth in many yards, taking in the lives and habits of people around me.
I remembered something else while pushing my mower recently – a lesson I had learned long ago but had completely forgotten. For me, mowing lawns was the first form of therapy I encountered. I suffer from self diagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder “A.D.D.” One of the benefits of aging has been that I have been better able to deal with the symptoms as my overall drive and hyper nature has balanced out, but as a young child, and especially as a teenager, the A.D.D. was truly awful. I felt like a rabid, wild ferret was loose in my brain most of the time, and I wanted more than anything else to just be able to relax, to focus on what people were saying, and to be “cool”. I wanted to remember instructions, and to not forget everything with no idea where I had placed any of it. Most of all, I wanted to be able to “hang out,” to just be with others and not feel like I had to talk, or pace, or fidget in some way. My fidgeting now is confined to small objects – pens, or keys or little knick knacks that I keep around to play with if I am sitting in one place for a long time. Finding ways to tame the wild ferret of A.D.D. has taken years, and I continue to struggle at times of high stress, but it has gotten better – manageable at least. And the first of those techniques I discovered was mowing lawns. For some reason, when I was outside, pushing around a machine and doing somewhat mindless work, I was able to focus and think more clearly than I had ever been able to before. I was never really “in the moment,” just enjoying that place and space in time, but I was able to slow down the raging ferret to some degree. I experienced what I would have then termed peace of mind. It would have been more accurate to term it peace from my mind, but at that time I did not know the difference. I just knew that the process of mowing felt peaceful – it was then and continues to be today an effective type of moving meditation for me. I have tried many traditional types of meditation over the years, and I have failed miserably with all of them. I think that the main reason for this is that many of the styles I sampled involved sitting still, and non-movement does not work for me. I am, by definition, kinetic.
And I have found out through the years that I am not alone. Other people have told me of their means of open air mobile meditation over the years – some have gardens, some plant flowers, some take pleasure in continually ripping up their yards and building patios, pools, or porches. But we all have something in common: we find peace, and tranquility, and the ability to focus in these tasks. We get in our “zone”. I would love to hear if any of you have a form of open air mobile meditation. I only named the few that I have heard about, but I know there are more – I know that there are more of us out there! If I have intrigued you to try mowing as a form of enlightenment, here are a few final tips:
- Never listen to music while mowing – it defeats the whole point.
- Riding mowers do not count! They defeat part of the whole point. So do the new fangled motorized ride on the back but you’re still standing up style mowers. Go for the old fashioned push style to achieve the best results.
- No answering the phone while mowing! This rule used to go without saying, but people who are mowing a lawn should never be interrupted to take a phone call unless a baby has been born or someone has died – period!
- Don’t rush the job, and always overlap your last row. Like most things in life, a lawn mowed in haste will never be as rewarding as one that you put some time and effort into.
- Try prayer. Some of the best conversations, inspirations, and revelations have taken place during these sacred times. Just trust me and give it a try.
- Not all lawns are the same. I need to remember that mine looks good – and in the grand scheme of things, I’ll take that. Don’t let anyone else’s lawn or life priorities distract you from what is really important to you and for you.
And that is all there is to it. Good luck in finding some degree of serenity in your yard this summer!
Meanwhile, some of us consider it to be noise (and other environmental) pollution.