Autumn has arrived with all its wonders. The air is fresh with little to no humidity, my garden has given the last of its bounty, and the leaves of the trees are starting to give a glimpse of the colors that are destined to explode around us. Now if my lawn would finally get the hint and stop growing I could be a happy camper.
Every five days since my yard went from a tundra to basically a hay field I have faithfully mowed it so I wouldn’t become the bum of the neighborhood. I kept it as short as possible in fear the dandelions would change the scene from green to yellow or getting any of the many sicknesses the bugs of the ground promised to inflict. In other words, I’ve been a good soldier.
The dog days of August used to give me a reprieve from the agony of attempting to keep up with the green carpet that surrounds my home. I used to love these days with my lawn turning a brownish tan and the only thing that grew was a phantom weed that must have evolved from deep in the Sahara Desert. I used to love those days.
With the warming of our planet and the inevitable El Nino that meteorologists used to predict every seven years or so, the grasses of my lawn have been perpetually watered, and even though I attempt not to allow any fertilizer to touch my property, with the exception of dog dung my neighbors refuse to pick up, the height and greenness of my lawn continues to continue.
Going into October, I pulled out of my garage my small hand mower and my tractor, which used to promise an easier mow but now leaves mounds of wet and cut green slime in little mounds throughout my yard. The last time I mowed I swear I heard a little cry from my smaller mower begging me to leave it alone in the corner of my garage until the wet and warm weather of spring.
My tractor handled this problem in a different fashion. For some odd and unknown reason, it locked its wheels as I attempted to roll it out of my garage. At first I was shocked because, after all, the machine was simply a machine. Then I thought of how I would feel after a spring and summer of attempting to cut through a rainforest-like field that promised to kill any mechanical entity placed before it.
After I coaxed out all of my machines, I attempted to check the oil, or what I like to call the blood of the machines. All seemed fine the first time. Since I always double-check myself, I was surprised that my second observation showed no oil in their crankcases. I had no clue as to what to think. I checked it the third time to discover all was up to level. My mind’s eye then assumed the machine I checked was holding its breath in hopes I would not ask it to strain its way through another mow, a process that should have ended by the end of September.
At first both lawnmowers would not start. Did I expect anything else? After priming both machines to the point they wanted to puke excess fuel, they finally started. For the next four hours it was man versus machine versus the weed called “grass.” I finally made it through the day, placed my soon-to-be-dying machines back into the garage at which time they immediately went into some kind of coma hoping the snows of winter would arrive with my soon-to-be-unhappy snow blower taking over their responsibility.
In total exhaustion, I limped toward my small refrigerator in my basement hoping to find some beer. I was thrilled to see there were still a couple left. Meandering out to my deck I sat down and opened what I hoped would be total ecstasy. Have I ever discussed how frozen beers can stress one out?
Jim Fabiano is a retired teacher and writer living in York.
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