(I have realised that this year’s an improvement on last year…)
Tonight I mowed my garden. I can’t really say “tonight I moved the lawn” because it’s not a lawn. A lawn is neat, green and manicured. A lawn is also made of grass - neat little blades of grass. The patch I have is approximately 35% clover (covered in purple flowers which are very pretty), 40% violets (which have made their way under the concrete path from the flower beds where they belong), 10% dandelions (covered with fuzzy white ‘clocks’ now that the sun is out), 7% ant-hill (more on that later) and only about 8% grass of varying types.
Lawns should be flat, like bowling greens. My grandparents had an amazing lawn. When I was little and we went to visit, I used to sit on the lawn and admire the uniformity of it all. It even had stripes mowed into it and although the garden was on a slight slope the ground itself was utterly flat. My ‘lawn’ isn’t like that. My ‘lawn’ has tussocks of coarse, hardy grass and now it also has ant-hills but I couldn’t see those when I started mowing because the grass was too long. It was long because we didn’t get a summer last year, we got rain. In fact we got so much rain that I haven’t actually had the opportunity to mow since last August, assuming that I’d been so inclined and I haven’t because I hate mowing.
I was brought up to be a feminist - terribly Equal Opportunities - women can do everything that men can do: usually more effectively and with less mess. I’ve lived on my own now for eight and a half years and in that time I’ve mended stuff, I’ve painted and lugged heavy furniture around. It’s not that I’m incapable of mowing, it’s just that I loathe it more than almost anything else I can think of. Mowing and putting the bins out on bin day are the two household chores that make me feel I need a man. For everything else there’s MasterCard well, there’s always a way round it. I could hire someone to come round and mow the lawn but I don’t. We don’t have reliable enough weather for a start. Mowing the lawn is not one of those jobs that can be planned weeks in advance like painting or plumbing. No, you have to wait until you get a nice enough day to dry the bloody grass out and then you have to get on and do it.
My neighbours all mutter about my lawn. Nobody’s ever said anything directly but I know they do. I feel their disapproving stares when I leave the house and try to ignore the jungle on my side of the path. We’re having a heatwave here and they all mowed their lawns last weekend. For various reasons I wasn’t up to it but the need to rid my neighbourhood of the blight that is my front garden has overridden the depression I’ve been feeling and galvanised me into action. I thought about getting into town to try and snare a bloke, whom I could charm into mowing it with promises of sex and food but decided that would take too long.
I had to wait until about 7 p.m. so it was cool enough to cope with it all. After a few attempts at unlocking the padlock on the shed (rusted through too much rain and lack of use) I dragged the door open over the long grass that had grown up in front of it. Bravely, I fished the mower out of the shed - ready to fend off attacks by giant spiders or wriggling rat babies - and brushed off the cobwebs. The mower has 6 height settings for the blade and I set it to the highest level. The last time I mowed the lawn I disturbed a frog which had made its home in the long grass. I wouldn’t want to have to scrape frog off the blades so setting number 6 it is.
Cursing the absence of a man, I had to empty the grass basket three times before I was finished. I also had to contend with realising that the reason the grass was so long in the middle of the garden was that ants have made a giant ant-hill there. In previous years I’ve made the rookie mistake of pouring boiling water on the nest but I know that down that path lies only ruin and bleached, dead grass so this time I used my weight to my advantage and stomped on it. Turns out I’m almost exactly the same weight as the giant rollers they use to flatten cricket pitches. Who knew?
An hour later and the grass is cut. I need to go out there again tomorrow with a strimmer to cut along the edge of the path and along the fence and the grass needs cutting on a lower setting but it’s better than it was. I even cut the front lawn which isn’t actually mine, it’s my next door neighbour’s but he’s been ill for a long time and isn’t up to doing it himself. Afterwards I stood back and surveyed the carnage. I sent him a text message to apologise for the state of it and reassure him that I would have another go and tidy up again tomorrow. He texted back, apologising for letting it get so bad and thanking me for it. “I’m so sorry I let you down”, he said. Of course he didn’t at all - it’s a sucky job and we both hate it but a little voice buried deep in my brain whispers that I’m not the only one who sees it as a man’s job.
I brought everything back into the house and left the mower in the front porch so that I have to finish what I started in the morning or I won’t be able to go out to collect Stumpy from school. I am still depressed but a small seed of smugness has germinated and maybe as the days pass it’ll help choke the depression rather like the clover/violets/dandelions and ant-hills have choked the grass on my lawn.
