Day: August 1, 2016

In the Dahlia garden, stars this morning.

I grew up and worked mostly in the great cities of the Northeast – Providence, New York City, Boston, Baltimore, Dallas –  and in one very hip and gentrifying suburb, Montclair, N.J.

In all those 50 plus years I never once mowed a lawn.  In Providence, where I grew up, my brother and father mowed the lawn. In the cities, there were no lawns for me to mow, and in Montclair, we hired a professional mower.

Lawns were taken very seriously in New Jersey. A messy lawn was considered a serious lapse in taste and decency and a threat to property values, which was a major crime. Many friendships were lost and neighbors alienated by poorly mowed or neglected lawns. Lawns were a big deal, so big a deal that I never mowed one, I was not a lawn professional.

I worked about 14 hours a day then, I didn’t have much time for mowing.

I didn’t really have much room to store a mower in New Jersey and had no desire to figure out how to maintain one, or deal with oil and gas and clogging. We hired Todd, a conscientious Vietnam Vet who came with his crew every week, trimmed the hedges, weed-whacked  the edges, raked out and weeded the gardens. And mowed. He came every week for 20 years, it never once occurred to me to mow my own lawn, nor did I know a single home owner who did.

I don’t think I new anyone, rich or poor, who mowed their own lawn. Very few of us could maintain the standards of the town. And it wasn’t something I did with my spare time, I read, went to movies, visited the city, did things with my daughter.

On the first Bedlam Farm, I hired the big men in trucks who came with their families and swept through the place, I was continuing my lifelong disconnection from the natural world, from the earth, from  my own property. The farm was on a steep and rolling hill, and I doubt I would have survived trying to mow it.

When we moved to this farm, the family of Florence Walrath asked me if I would be interested in keeping her old riding mower, it didn’t work too well – Florence had run it into one of the barns – but I loved the old thing, it was tough like Florence, I spent a lot of money trying to fix it up – and I began mowing my lawn for the first time in my life.

I still remember the first mowing, I was thrilled by it, I felt a strong connection to my farm, my farmhouse, to the earth around it. I felt very American, like a real man, almost as tough as Florence.

The mower finally gave out  and could not be repaired, so I bought a hand mower and continued mowing my lawn. I was surprised by how much I loved doing it, after all those years of not doing it.  I monitored the glass closely closely, was careful about bushes and trees and gardens. I was proud of our somewhat battered old farm, a lawn to me was a sign that the farm was loved and cared for, a signal to the world.

In America, a lawn is a curious thing. This morning, Maria and I were discussing an experiment to see how part of the lawn would look if left to grow naturally, to become a meadow of some kind. I told her I would miss mowing the lawn, it was healthy to push it around, it connected me to our home and the ground around it.

The truth is lawns are not important to me. I don’t care how green or neat ours really is, and I never notice how green or neat anyone else’s lawn is. It isn’t the lawn, it’s the mowing and the mastery of my own machine. Maria was puzzled that I wanted to get a new mower, I think she got it when she saw the end result Saturday afternoon.

After my open heart surgery, I was not permitted to mow the lawn for months, we hired our friend Tyler to move our lawn. We also bought a new and smaller lawn for Maria so she could help me.  I remember feeling adrift that summer, I hated it when Tyler came to mow my lawn, I couldn’t wait until the doctors gave me permission to do it myself. It was in October, I believe, when I got back to it, the last mowing.

My mower and I did not get along, we just bulled our way through it. My lawn seemed tougher and more resilient than the mower. I don’t think I ever used it without having it choke and clog and stall. It didn’t start, or couldn’t handle the inclines, or got all stuffed up when the grass was tall. It smoked and buckled.

Last week, after it stalled four times in own mowing, I got fed up and headed for Ace, our local hardware store, and Bryan, my counselor in all things relating to machines, the store manager.

I threw myself on the mercy of Bryan at the hardware store and I ended up buying a new Tory hand-propelled mower. He keeps trying to explain the engine to me, and I admire that he never gives up on this, I could not tell you a single thing about it. This is a big deal for me. Something I had never once wanted or bothered to do for most of my life has become important to me.

I feel stronger when I mow, I feel proud of my home, and of my lawn. I feel like other men, something that has always eluded me. I feel connected to my farm. I spent seven or eight hours mowing the lawn the day I got this new mower – Saturday – and it was a hot day, and I perhaps over did it, I was sweating and worn out. But the lawn never looked better, the blades were set on law, the machine on automatic mulch, it never once stalled or clogged, not after hours and hours of mowing tall and thick grass.

When I mow, Maria goes and pulls her our tough and (naturally) cheaper mower and we work together on the lawn, something I enjoy. She starts on one end, I start on the other, we smile and nod to each other along the way and trade bottles of water. So we mow together, something else I cold not have imagined in all of those years in New Jersey and those cities.

I slept well Saturday night, my legs are still sore, my heart beating strong. My new mower and I are going to be good friends. Bryan even finally taught me how to check the oil.

Our back porch is a tapestry, an ever-evolving reflection of who we are and where we are. At any given moment, there may  be chickens, a barn cat, or a dog or two lying there or sitting on the fiber chair. There is never a person sitting on the back porch, it has been taken over.

The Fiber Chair is Minnie’s throne these days, she sleeps there at night, sits there during the day. Once in awhile, she ventures forth to snatch a mouse or mole, whose remains will be waiting for us by the the back door. I see the porch as a tableau, there is Ed Gulley’s “Mr. Blockhead,” Maria’s chair, two years in the making, a box of kindling and some hanging plants. There is a lot on the back porch, it is a kind of living testament.

There are flowers all around the front of the porch, the farm is in riotous bloom this summer. Minnie on her throne has become a symbol of us right now.

In our world at the moment, a Monday kiss is a good way to start the day and the week. Chloe sees me coming out of the house, and is waiting for me by the gate, along with the donkeys. I smile when I see her, or so says Maria, and when I get to the get we exchange a few kisses.

Talk about setting the tone, I begin the day with warmth and a smile, and so I will share these kisses with you in the hope that it also brings warmth and a smile to  your Monday morning. We often take ourselves too seriously, the world is not a horrible place, it is, in some ways, a better place than it has ever been.

Chloe and her kisses remind me of this in the same way that Simon’s call to life reminded me of this, Animals can do this for us, if we let them, they can help us find balance and perspective,