Call me
mean, but at our house, the one-armed guy does the grass mowing.
Not
that I haven’t done my share. When our kids were too little to push our old
walk-behind and we had acres of country property to cut, I got the workout most
of the time. As the children grew, they each graduated into the job and we eventually
upgraded to a ride-on. After the kids moved out, I stubbornly refused to get
behind a mower even though we had downsized to a tiny lawn. I figured if I gave
in once, the job would be mine forever.
The
problem is, my idea of when grass needs cutting differs from that of the
one-armed guy. In order to maintain my position, I’ve been forced to swallow my
pride several times when, in my humble opinion, our lawn did not live up to
neighbourhood standards.
But
farm work must come first, I’m told. So with hubby off doing the farm thing, I
decided to be nice and cut the grass. All right. I admit I was less motivated
by being nice than by the prospect of company coming. Our son’s family, along
with his wife’s parents and my mom were all coming over. Our son’s
father-in-law is all thumbs—green thumbs, that is. He’s a plant-whisperer. His
yard looks like the Butchart Gardens and it’s a real exercise in humility to
let him see ours, even at its best. Which it definitely wasn’t.
How hard can this be? I
thought, pulling the mower out of the shed. I fiddled with the electric starter
until it roared to life, then began to push.
Wow, I thought. I know I’m getting older, but I don’t
remember this being such hard work.
But I bravely
soldiered on, grunting at every turn, sweat running down my back and shoulders aching.
I gained a new appreciation for the one-armed guy. I was nearly finished the
front yard when a thought occurred to me:
Three
more thoughts followed, in rapid succession:
What does this lever do?
Whoa!
and,
Wait for me!
With
this new discovery, I made better time in the back yard. Then I nearly stepped
in some dog poop. We don’t have a dog. It looked dry and I wore gloves, so I
picked it up and tossed it into the barrel with the weeds I’d been pulling
earlier. Dumb move. The poop wasn’t dry. Thankfully, a new pair of gloves
waited in the shed.
Later,
I set that barrel with the dog poop into the box that holds our trash cans. The
one with the closed lid. The one the hot sun beats on. The one I would open the
next day and nearly faint from the assault to my nose. Yeah, that one.
Don’t
try this at home, kids.
With
the mowing done, I looked around at my work. It seemed odd that I’d filled the grass
bag only once and our dandelions still showed off their chipper yellow faces. In
fact, I could hardly tell I had mowed.
Later,
I learned the mower blade sat too high to do a proper job.
Still, I’d
made an improvement. Not that it mattered. By the time the plant-whispering
company arrived two days later, the lawn was covered with snow. Gotta love Manitoba.
That
was a week ago. As I write this, the one-armed man is mowing our lawn. Music to
my ears.