My Kingdom for a Lawnmower

 

• This is the first of several writing pieces I am writing about my garden in an effort to make up for my initial statement about my relationships with nature. I decided to go ‘small’ and concentrate on what is close to home. I hope it will work.

Mowing our extensive lawn is my acknowledged job. While we rotate other chores, no one will ever try to take that one away from me. I spend endless hours on the riding- mower and wonder time and time again how I was pulled into doing it almost from the moment we became the owners of this piece of land our motel occupies.

This is a complex question seeing that I am so technically challenged that every machine from the car I drive, out of pure necessity, to the printer in the office, even a simple stapler dares me to a mind duel, one I usually miserably loose.

But the lawn-mower is my salvation (for the lack of a better word), it is my private escape, my mode of deliverance and in some odd way my direct touch with nature from a safe and respected distance.

From the top of the mower, roaring along, there is no question that I am in control. I dictate the pace, the course and the depth of the cut into the grassy lawn. I get to decide which part of the lawn will be cut and which left to grow. Flowers nod their head with respect (perhaps fear), when I zoom next to them, and most of the small insects and other assorted living things, hiding in the tall grass, make sure to stay out of my way.

But it is also a point of bonding.

As I travel along, sideways, and around my kingdom, I can inspect and marvel at every small detail. Far but not really out of sight I can see every blade of grass, every tiny flower, every new rock that emerged out of the earth to threaten my smooth sail along the lawn.

The newly planted flowering Weeping Willow trees I placed in the ground last fall after careful consideration of their growth rate and flowering ability, I ride by them to check their progress. I look with pride at the wild lilies I planted along the border, so small when I uprooted them from someone else’s garden and are now thriving in the wet environment next to the front conduit. The Nine Cattail that sway slowly in the breeze, my modest contribution to the assortment of flora in its muddy bottom.

 Back and forth, riding from one side of the lawn to another, I watch with satisfaction the tiny blades of freshly cut grass flying out of the mower side chute. Every few minutes I look back over my shoulder at the clear lines I created in the overgrown grass. It’s the sense of fulfillment deriving from a task well done but also the pride of an artist inspecting his creation.

It is like an allegory I did not fully uncovered, but one day will reveal itself to me and until then the lawn-mower a green and yellow John-Deere, and me, will keep on cruising along, from one side of the lawn to the other, keeping an eye on its inhabitants.