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It is finally springtime in the Northeastern United States. Time to get serious about lawn care. I rent my lawn these days, but it is still my job to take care of it and this man has to do what this man has to do.
I have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. This means my balance isn’t what it used to be. Luckily the yard is small. Unfortunately, it isn’t all flat. At first, I thought even attempting to direct a very dangerous machine across such terrain was not a good idea. It turned out to be a great idea. Going slow and staying focused on the job at hand was critical. At first, I believe that the controlled movements of lawn mowing came to be a good treatment for my Parkinson’s Disease.
Taking care of yards has been an important part of growing up male. I remember wanting to pick flowers for my mother as a young boy. She accepted my dandelion bouquets with warm smiles. The flowers that went to seed were amazing. A soft blow launched hundreds of seeds attached to tiny white parachute-like strands. All of this wonderful happening in the lawns of the houses we lived in until I got older. One day my mother told me that she would appreciate it greatly if I worked on picking all of the bright yellow dandelion flowers in the yard before they turned white. She explained that the seeds could easily drift onto a neighbor’s yard and this would not be appreciated. I couldn’t imagine why having more beautiful yellow flowers around would be a problem for anyone, but I had no trouble covering more ground to do more picking.
Then it got explained to me that I was doing it wrong. To get rid of a dandelion you needed to pull it out by the roots. This was not easy to do without the root snapping off. My mother explained that if part of the root remained in the ground the plant could grow back. She showed me how to use a gardening tool to get the job done. I wasn’t very good at using that tool.
The dandelion went from being a renewable source of beauty and wonder to a dreaded weed that might piss off a neighbor. When I grasped that a flowering plant can be unwanted because it was common and didn’t obey the limits of a flower bed I knew that I had just learned one of those important things that grown-ups knew. I felt honored to be considered mature enough to be so informed.
I soon learned, that particularly for men, green grass trimmed short was the king of domestic plants. Caring for it involved several boyhood important rites of passage. It was made clear to me that nearly all things flowers were for females to have and for males to give, but to not outwardly appreciate. Males never got flowers as gifts except for at their funeral.
Flowers given to a female was a great way to gain favor or to distract from mistakes made. Lawns were the almost exclusive domain of men. Within this domain flowers were weeds. So too was any other plant, no matter how interesting to look at, that was other than grass.
Grass left to grow over about two inches high was a commentary on the character of its owner. Nothing reveals sloth or illness like a man’s yard being allowed to do what comes naturally. Taking care of business usually meant having a gasoline powered mower. In the era I grew up in lack of a gasoline powered mower to cut grass with meant a lack of income. Most men cut their lawn with the type of gasoline powered lawn mower you had to push. Later came the type you didn’t need to do that. Then came the riding mower.
Gasoline powered lawn mowers can easily chop off an arm or a leg or send a stone through a window. They can also catch on fire. When a boy is trusted to use one of those, it is a special day.
When a boy graduates to a riding mower, he isn’t far removed from one of the ultimate rites of male passage, driving an automobile. Getting good with operating a lawn mower could also lead to an opportunity to mow lawns for money. This was often a boy’s first paying job.
I didn’t spend my extra time mowing lawns. I spent it complaining about needing to mow my family’s lawn. I got a job delivering newspapers.
When my father retired he looked forward to hopping on his riding mower for something to do. When he died suddenly I was very concerned about how my mother was going to cope. On the day that my siblings and I planned to leave her following my father’s funeral, she told us that she would appreciate it if we would stay long enough to be sure she knew how to operate the mower. She was grieving the loss of her life partner, was sad that her children had to return to their homes, and had a broad grin on her face as she mowed.
When I shared ownership of land and a house with some banks, I chose to mow my own lawn and their lawn until it was time for the rite of passage of this responsibility to my oldest son. I was not denying this honor to a daughter. I didn’t have any daughters, just two sons. My son found that mowing the lawn made him appreciate video games and computers more. I never was any good at computer games. I decided to keep mowing the lawn.
The lawn was small, but big enough to throw a baseball around, a softball around and to have a game of badminton. None of these were any competition for the allure of video games, computers and musical instruments for my sons. I had no chance that my grounds keeping would provide a practice field for future sports champions. I was blessed by being in the audience of multiple musical performances featuring my sons. I got a strange satisfaction out of being informed, by my oldest son that he had been kicked out of his high school’s computer class, because he had been caught hacking into the school’s report card database.
I have no regrets about missing out on watching my kids chase after balls rolling on professionally maintained turf.
I must admit that controlling the direction of a rapidly rotating sharp steel blade to avoid encounters with rocks and toads is just easy enough that the mind can drift to a pleasant degree while mowing. When the job is done there comes a degree of satisfaction in having played a part in making things appear more respectful of the neighborhood.
A more modern issue with lawn care is tick-borne diseases. Some of my fondest early boyhood memories involve rolling around in the grass of lawns and hiding in unkept straw fields making friends with the insects. Now I try to avoid any bare skin contact with any vegetation of any kind to reduce the risk of tick born disease. I thought I had been doing a pretty good job with this until last Tuesday. Monday, I felt fine. Tuesday, fever, and fatigue made being vertical for more than 4 minutes difficult. Wednesday, I had blood and urine lab work done. Thursday, I was diagnosed with a tick-borne bacterial infection. Saturday the lawn service that my wife called to take my place showed up.
I thought it might be an interesting idea to leave the lawn go for just two months so we could both recover together. The lawn would erupt with wildflowers and all sorts of leaf design. I could walk amongst it and give the ticks their due. I have never seen a tick on the property, have never seen any signs of being bitten. I hope it is the correct diagnosis because I feel better today after taking the prescribed medication for the last three days.
Regarding the lawn, we are going with my wife’s idea of employing the professional yard service. I may have just mowed my last yard.
Many men have deep satisfactions associated with their yard work. Landscaping and yard maintenance one of the few businesses not yet pushed out of the small business market.
Many men have special memories of their participation events that took place on superbly fertilized and manicured rectangles of green.
I believe that all men have memories of times when plant and animal diversity was cherished. Times when the astonishingly complex interactions within that diversity fed all and mesmerized all with its no need for alteration beauty.
In these days of preoccupations with whether or not a ball landed on which side of a white line is more popular than being in the ever-shrinking, no longer actually existing, wild, many men feel lost. Appreciation for nature’s positioning of its components lost.
As we work on repenting for what we have done and continue to do to strip the Earth of its wonders, we may pray that powers beyond our imagination can make things whole again and that we will remember the reasons why, when it comes our time to pay the price of our greed.
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