ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 18, 1996 TAG: 9606180036
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
In our neighborhood, and probably in yours, there are two kinds of people: Those who obsess over every claw of crabgrass and every dandelion dagger. And those who believe in equal opportunity for anything remotely green - hold the Round-Up, please.
Put another way: There are people who own their lawns. And there are people whose lawns own them.
This would a good place to tell you about my husband's foray into the world of used riding lawn mowers. Back when we had almost two acres to tend in our back yard at the base of Fort Lewis mountain. Back when we were not only cheap, we were gullible, too.
Back when our brand-new used, $250 Toro shot a piston so loud and so deep into the woods that every wild turkey and deer within a five-mile radius flew for cover. And we'd only mowed the first two rows.
This explains our love-hate relationship with immaculate lawns - and the people who keep them.
Our friend Matt describes his own aerated, weeded, fertilized and watered plot of green as ``a plush carpet'' of grass. Looking at our front yard recently - a throw rug of dandelions, clover and crabgrass with a lone spear of Kentucky blue thrown in every couple of yards or so - he volunteered his thatching and reseeding services on the spot.
It was clear to him that we needed help.
``Two Saturdays, and you, too, can have plush carpet in your yard,'' he pledged.
My husband declined his offer of assistance. But for some reason the seed of lawn maintenance seemed to take root. For someone who can't tell a fescue from a fertilizer, it was astonishing.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, he raked one-half of our front yard the way a surgeon scrubs for surgery - a process Matt refers to as ``thatching.''
At least four neighbors (those in the lawn-obsessed camp) stopped to marvel and to analyze: The brand of seed, the prescribed amount of watering, follow-up treatments, etc.
When I came home, I found my husband slumped on a front-porch chair, the garden rake askew beside him, a beer in his hand and a confused look that exuded part pride, part embarrassment.
``Look what it's come to,'' he said. ``I own Bermuda shorts, and I wear them.
``I complain about wire grass.
``If I'd have driven by me 10 years ago, I'd have made fun of me.''
And so it goes with the middle-aged lawn gene. It's the outdoor equivalent of nose hair. You try plucking it out, but it's hardy stuff, like so many weeds after a rain storm.
But it is, as they say, better than the alternative. Our 82-year-old next-door neighbor, Edna, finally said good-bye to her self-propelled Lawn Boy last spring, leaving the chore for our other neighbors, Jeanne and Deby.
``This year, it's your turn,'' Jeanne informed us. She whispered that the best time to mow Edna's lawn is when she's out visiting friends. Otherwise she'll bug you to let her mow it herself - though she knows she shouldn't, doctor's orders.
``Come on, just a few rows,'' the ritual goes, followed by a nostalgic account of all the neighborhood lawns she mowed in her heyday. And then there's the argument over the bill: You say there is none, she insists on paying you. You stand firm. She threatens to ``hit you over the head.''
Finally, she stuffs a $5 bill in your pocket or your mailbox. You give up.
It reminds me of my Grandma, who also lived next door and whose lawn I also mowed - the first work I ever did for pay. It reminds me of sneaking into our dirt-floor garage: the glorious smell of gasoline, my mom's neverending ``be carefuls'' and the weekly battle to get that red battered machine started on my own, without Dad's help.
I think it's possible to chart your life - your health, your maturity and even your waning years - by the way in which your grass gets cut.
So, in these dog days of lawn-tending, think about mowing as more than a chore. Think about it as personal growth.
I do. It makes the weeding and seeding more palatable somehow.
One of these days, my husband might even finish thatching the other half of our front yard.
If so, I'll buy him a grandpa hat, like our buddy Matt wears - something along the lines of Henry Fonda's in ``On Golden Pond.''
To match his Bermuda shorts.
Beth Macy's column runs in Tuesday and Thursday Extra. Call her at 981-3435, e-mail bmacy@roanoke.infi.net, or write her at P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke, Va. 24010.|
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