Cutting Grass

IF YOU PAY CLOSE ATTENTION to American suburbia, and to their lawns, and if you didn't know better, you might think that mowing the lawn is the most arduous task in the world. Most of my neighbors, whose yards are far smaller than mine, either pay someone to cut the grass, or they do it themselves while sitting down. And most of them do it with what seems to me to be insufficient frequency. One of my neighbors had a riding mower briefly, then was reduced to a push mower. The rider didn't work out well. Maybe he couldn't pay for it. One day I saw the young man driving in circles around his house, making a sort of race track with the grass entirely brown from having been allowed to grow too long, then cut too short. He didn't seem to care. The grass adjacent to the race track remained a foot tall. Desperate, I one day finished mowing my lawn, then kept right on going, and did part of his, stopping only when I ran out of gas. I was hoping he would get the message. He didn't. Obviously its none of my business what others do with their lawns; my concern was that if wild animals began to inhabit my neighbor's perpetually overgrown lawn, the wildlife might start invading my yard, and frighten my cats. It amazes me that so many people with small yards own riding mowers. I won't have one. For me lawn mowing has become a primary source of exercise, since my senior years seem to require a lessening of more rigorous forms of exercise, like running. The upper middle class sod yard set invariably has riders, or hired hands, and their lawns take on a sort of artificial turf look. when I first moved in, imbued with a zealous desire to save the planet and get a great yard-side workout, I actually bought a mechanical mower; you know, the kind with the rotating blades and no motor which will not move unless pushed and used to be prominent in the fifties and sixties. Those always made a sound which I thought quite pleasant. It didn't work out, however. Too much work, even for me. Thus, I confess that, at least in spirit, I am no better than my neighbors.