Lawns

My change in life circumstances has led me to a new discovery. I actually like lawn mowing. For me, lawn mowing was always a boring activity. Melissa volunteered to do it after work, but with the free time I now have thanks to the Great Tech Layoffs, I have assumed that role here at the house.

Rather than be a boring, mindless activity, I now find lawn mowing to be both a physical and meditative activity. Therefore, useful to me. There is the physical act of pushing of the lawn mower over the grass, followed by the meditative act of contemplating what path the mower will take on its next pass. Will the pattern be a back-and-forth pattern, or will it be a circular pattern around the perimeter of the lawn? Finally, there is the concentration required to follow the line from previous passes.

For years, I saw lawn mowing as a useless activity done by bored suburbanites with limited interests. I grew up in Ohio, where conformity in all things was the rule. A lawn with taller grass or flower beds placed about the yard was a no-no. Everyone’s grass had to be neatly manicured—not too tall, not too short. And it had to be verdant! It could not be burned out, so a Rain Bird sprinkler for the dry months of July and August was a must.

My dad never let on to this, but he was quite a hyper-competitive guy. Honestly, I now realize he could have been as competitive as a modern hard-charging entrepreneur. But it was not in obvious areas of his life, such as business or sports. And he never let this side really show. While he was competitive in sports, golf was the only sport where he pushed himself. The other area of his life where he was really competitive was with our lawn. No neighbor was going to outdo him with a better manicured lawn. Any time the neighbor was out with his lawn mower, dad would be out there with his.

The only problem was that the neighbors had built-in sprinkler systems. So frequent lawn-mowing all summer was required for their lawns. Dad was too cheap to install such a system. And even if the house came with it, he would probably not have run it because of the water bills. As such, by August the lawn was brown and dried out, yet he would still be out cutting it so as not to be outdone when it came to grass height. (Of course, by this time his lawn was the rattiest on the block due to lack of water.)

Then there was his perfectionism when it came to grass cutting. One time in the 1980s I cut the grass for him and then went out to run errands. When I came back he was sitting on the porch, his head moving slowly back and forth, surveying the front lawn with a stern eye. I got out of the car and greeted him. He then shook his hand, pointing to various areas of the lawn. “OK, the work is not bad,” he told me. “But, you missed a spot here, here, and here,” pointing at the areas where I missed. The life lesson from that for me was how to face a persnickety manager during an annual performance review.

Where I live now there is no competition between neighbors on how their lawns appear. As long as one’s lawn is neat and the town council is not sending you threatening letters, you are doing fine. So now I just make sure it looks neat, not burned out, and is free of weeds. I break out the Apple Watch before firing up the lawn mower so as to track my steps and physical activity while pushing the mower so that I get a sense that I did something good for myself as well as the house.

Maintaining a lawn should be a physical and meditative activity, not a competitive sport! Here’s wishing everyone a nice lawn this summer.