Mow Rest for the Wicked

Dreary Tales of a Surburban Dweller (cont...)

'I'm just going to mow the front strip of lawn' I casually said to my son as we finished our dinner.

Managing the rampant growth of the unruly lawn during summer is somewhat of an ongoing battle for me.

Being a corner block, it screams 'Look at me!' to all of the passing traffic, the discerning public whose heads turn as they tut tut at the mass of tall-yellow headed hi-viz dandelions waving about in the breeze defiantly like domestic hoodlums.

'Hello, my name is Kim, and it has been ten days since I last mowed my lawn'

Summer - a mixture of unpredictably scorching sun, torrential downpours of rain, or steamy quagmires of post-drench red urban mud - none of which are ideal for this lawn mowing caper.

Ideally, prime lawn mowing conditions exist at sunrise - 4.30am here...when the cooler night air gently lingers before the brazen heat and humidity of the day makes every surface sizzle mid-summer and the mere raise of an eyebrow results in a trail of sweat down one's face.

The best time of day.

Not the majority view however, with only one third of the population identifying as early birds (and an even lower proportion of teenagers), so I'm not sure my neighbours (nor teens) would embrace the same level of enthusiasm for getting the job done at the crack of dawn.

My dog too would not be impressed with my decision to prioritise the needs of the garden over frolicking on the beach with her at sunrise.

Not that I should care too much about my neighbours. My favourite ones were evicted from their home the week before Christmas as the owner decided it was time to take advantage of the interest from developers in the area and cash up. They were the kind of neighbours who left a bag of mandarins from their tree on the back doorstep, and endured my nightly singing in the kitchen without complaints to Council, and they were also the proud parents to two big friendly dogs, who darling doggo spent most of her time talking to under the fence.

And the woman who moved into the duplex on the other side a few months ago had already scowled darkly at me on our first interaction when I politely asked her if she could please move her giant American monster truck from the median strip outside the front of my house so I could mow the lawn. She snarled and hissed revving the obnoxious engine as she drove the two feet down the curb and onto the road.

Another neighbour had left an anonymous note a couple of months back in my letter box IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS with the words 'YOUR DOG BARKS WHEN YOU ARE NOT HOME!' screaming at me from the page - mortifying....I didn't even know whom I should apologise to for darling doggo's enthusiastic chorus, although I so suspect it was the elderly Geoff from the house opposite who, like Mrs Mangel, was always watching from the front porch of his house, pointing out what was wrong with my lawn, my tree, my fence, and no doubt my dog - time for a new hobby Geoff!

Anyway, as 4.30am was not an option, and quite frankly after working all week and being Uber Mum ferrying the teens around to work, food, and social activities, my weekend time is precious to me, I opted to get a head start on the lawns tonight.

My lawn, takes approximately two hours of hard slog to mow. Around half of it is council land, which, due to a block that slopes gently downwards toward the house from the street, retains a fair amount of moisture in the soil - as evidenced by the boggy trenches ploughed by the wheels of the postie's wee delivery bike that run from the street to my gate. There are two power poles, a manhole (or is the correct term a personhole these days?), a covered Telstra pit, a street sign, and two sawn off tree stumps - discretely hiding just beneath the tips of the grass like landmines waiting to ambush the unweary pedestrian.Then there are the towering red pyramids created by the infamous giant ants of Urban Mountain. Dotted across the landscape, these typically appear after rain and present a challenge for any urban lawnmower as they wrestle with the undercarriage in an attempt to smother the swirling blades. The mower often baulks at driving over these mounds, groaning and shuddering in protest, threatening to take an impromptu shift-break mid-mow.

And so, comitted to getting the job done (or at least that part of it in the view of the judgey public) I popped in my ear buds to listen to an audiobook and mowed happily away as the sun slowly sunk beneath the horizon.

It was getting dark, I hadn't quite finished, and there were still a fair few strips of flourishing green grass to massacre.

And so I soldiered on in the darkness.

Having finally finished the outer lawn, and not wanting to give up just yet, I was on a roll, and at a really interesting part of the audio book, and so onward I mowed, now tackling the even more lush greenery, requiring infinitely more gruntwork to push the mower through the veritable Lilliputian jungle of grass within the inner sanctum of my urban block.

By now I was wishing that my mower had headlights. In fact I mentally went off on a random tangent wondering how difficult it would be to add a couple to the front of the chassis and why had no genius thought of this before! It could be my one brilliant cash cow enterprise!

Possibly because normal folk don't mow after dark, because it is night time, and it is dark, and as I discovered, you can't readily tell what you are running over - a tree-dropped branch, the garden hose, a rock, or in my case a squeaky dog ball that gave me a horrible fright when I thought I may have run over a wild bat as it let out the most terrifying squeals as it was slaughtered in the blades of death!

Then there were the perils of nature after dark, the relentless mosquito attacks, walking into a giant invisible spider's web, and that weird monstrous crawling beetle that I flicked off my upper leg just before it made its way up to my face and sucked my brain out with its menacing pincers.

And finally, after two hours of dirt, sweat, and obstacles, the lawn was mowed. What had started out as a spontaneous decision to do a quick whip around while it was still light, had become a mowing marathon in the darkness.

A sense of self satisfaction at the success in conquering the mundane fell upon me as I flicked the lever into off position and the mower shuddered to a halt with a groan.

And just in time for the weekend - hoorah!