Mowing my lawn

Being a homeowner is more satisfying than I might have anticipated. I couldn't imagine the difference between renting and owning, in much the same way that I couldn't fathom marriage, an indescribable situation that I'll save for another day. There's the daydreaming to be sure. Not a day goes by that we don't imagine the driveway improvements, paint colors, and zinnia beds that would make such a difference in the value of our home. HGTV has taken on new meaning and Ace Hardware is no longer just a place to buy kitschy retro kitchen gifts.

Today the homeowner activity is grass mowing. My husband has his chores but mowing is mine. 5,000 square feet of mixed-species grass and weeds that are mine and about which I care quite dearly. It's been watered, weeded and fed, and otherwise tended since we moved in and I think it might be paying off. We bought the house from a flipper. It has a new kitchen and a master suite but the landscaping, beyond the first 6 feet away from the front of the house, was ignored and it's about 50 years old. Also, apparently, a drainage line was replaced somewhat recently and the fill dirt was left to be covered with whatever seeds and what not came along. The eastern third of the lawn is the eastern neighbor's zoysia. The western third is the western neighbor's bermuda grass. The middle, where the drainage line was run, is weedy dirt. But, as I said, I think the water and fertilizer and so on are starting to help close the gap. This won't get rid of the lumps and bumps but, well, it will be fine.

So, I left work early to mow. I pulled the mower out from under the house, added gas from the can, pulled five times, and mowed. I think this might be the most zen I have in my life, this coming from a yoga enthusiast. It's so loud that even when I've wanted to wear headphones and listen to music, they have to be turned up to the point of serious ear damage so now I just listen to the hummm, clack clack clack, hummm of the mower as I walk every square foot of my own personal grass patch. From this vantage point, I can see that many of the weeds I observed a few months ago have either gone dormant or fallen victim to Senor Scott. I can also see that many of them have not. I can feel with my feet that much of the grass (eastern third) is so thick that it bears my weight, allowing the bugs and worms to go unmolested beneath. I can smell the differences in the shrubs as I duck beneath them, jostling them soundly with my shoulder, leaving with dead flowers and seed pods in my hair and on my shirt. My hands are numb, my skin itches, and I sneeze and sweat and smell like gasoline and cut grass. It smells and feels like summer. My sister was the one who cut most of the grass growing up. My sister and my dad. We got money for chores and she was older than I was so she was allowed the more dangerous chore first. So, my sister cut most of the grass but sometimes she was at camp and eventually she graduated and left home and then I did some cutting. We had a mower that was much like the one I'm using now but it wasn't a mulcher so we emptied the bag on the back when it filled, which happened three or four times per cutting, the cut grass would be wet and stick in there and you would have to kick the bag with your foot to get it out and, if you filled it too full, tug it out with your hand. We piled it into various places around the yard that were meant, I think, to be compost piles but they got too big and too full and they didn't break down as fast as they grew so we started piling it around a big oak tree in front, then in a corner in the back, and ultimately filled all of the unused portions of the yard. I guess my dad did as much to that grass as I do now. You don't notice these things when you're small. There are neighbors driving by. I wonder if they are thinking negatively about my husband for leaving the mowing to me or positively about me for mowing or if they're noticing me at all. There's one neighbor who's dog is always peeing in our flower bed. She pulls him by because I'm watching but you can see that he recognizes the spot. It's 6pm so the temperature has come down to 92. The hair at the back of my neck is making those pointy spikes that cause me to hate short hair. I'm sneezing like there's no tomorrow. I've been in the air conditioning all day and it waits for me inside but, for now, it's late June and I recognize summer and say, "Hello. I've missed you. You haven't changed a bit."