Fri, 1 July 2016, 11:30 am: I’ve slept twelve hours since arriving home yesterday afternoon, but those hours were in three distinct chunks and have not made a dent in my mild disorientation. I can’t call it jet lag because I am not lagging. I’ve not let myself lag and, though it’s pig-roasting hot outside, my non-lag is motivating me into the sun.
This is the time of day to mow the grass in Florida. Mow earlier in the morning, before the dew has evaporated, and you’re asking for a slower run and frequent clogging of the blades with wet grass. Mow later in the afternoon and you risk being rained out or struck by lightning.
I mowed my front, back, and side yards over the three days prior to flying to Europe. After not being cut since 13 June, my grass is longer than the line to climb the Campanile at Piazza del Duomo in Florence. I figure, hey, it’s only two hundred and twelve degrees outside (that’s Celsius, so it’s much higher in Fahrenheit). Now that it’s approaching noon, could there be a more pleasant time to push mow half an acre?
Before getting started I hear the commotion at a neighbor’s house of two large pick-up trucks— one with a flatbed trailer attached— being vacated by a team of swarthy young men. Armed with a weed eater, two riding lawnmowers, a leaf blower, and other tools of the lawn care trade, these industrious dudes make short work of the tiny yard.
What? For that small amount of grass, those neighbors pay an agency for mowing? I am travel-fried and out of sorts. I could be hiring my property mowed rather than dragging my weary bones out here to struggle through it myself. Those neighbors are only ever out in this heat long enough to move from one of their expensive brand new vehicles to their air-conditioned living room. Why should I be suffering out here? I’m the one who just exhausted himself traipsing around Europe for two and a half weeks.
As soon as it has formed, that question answers itself.
Those sheltered neighbors have never been to Europe. They are never going to Europe. It will never cross their minds to go to Europe.
They no doubt draw a higher income than my household. They could financially afford a Europe trip much more capably than I can. But they will, without even giving it a nanosecond of thought, spend their income instead on lawn maintenance that they could do themselves. On satellite tv sports packages providing more NBA and NFL games than any household could possibly watch. On designer clothing and overpriced shoes. On giant trucks that no human being needs to own unless he’s transporting heavy cargo on a regular basis. (Seriously. Why are there so many oversized pick-up trucks in my town? Doesn’t it cost way more in gas to drive one of those behemoths? Doesn’t it concern you at all that your truck is loud enough to wake up all your neighbors when you cruise down our residential streets? Or that your daily carbon footprint is Sasquatch-sized?)
I have never bought a riding mower because they’re more expensive, not just in the initial purchase but in the maintenance— more moving parts to potentially break down, more intricate machinery demanding higher-paid technicians to repair. Plus, shoving this vegetation-chomping critter around my yards saves me money in another way. Who needs to pay for a gym membership when you’re scoring a cardio workout and sweating off five pounds for every thirty minutes you push mow in July?
My grass today wouldn’t have been so long if I’d hired it mowed while I was away but, again, there’s money. So it looks raggedy for the last week I’m gone. Big whoop. I come home to weeds and a business card from a lawn care company stuffed in my doorjamb, and my first mow upon return is tougher because of the extra length and thickness of the grass. But I save a chunk of change. And I take more pride in today’s yard clean-up because there was way more to clean up.
It’s because I don’t mind push mowing my own half-acre, even in the dead of summer, that I can afford to travel.
I sweat, I catch a bit of sunburn, I push myself to the same physical limits that I just exceeded yesterday. And you know what? I enjoy it. There’s a satisfaction in earning it. Let those neighbors pay a crew to do what they could do themselves. I’ll continue to tend my own grass and pocket the savings. At a minimum of, what? Thirty bucks per mow, if I hire a neighborhood teenager to do it? I’ll bet the professional team costs my neighbors a sight more than that.
And if I save myself thirty per mow, figuring mowing at least once every week during summer, that’s 120 per month. 120 is two nights’ stay at the rental home with pool we discovered in Pican. 120 is dinner for two at the cliffside restaurant in Rovinj where you can count the sea bass in the ocean as you eat the sea bass on your plate. 120 is twelve (twelve!) bottles of the white wine crafted with love by the fourth generation of one family at a tiny winery in the hills of Istria. And those lovely applications are all in just one country, Croatia. Delightful alternate uses for 120 dollars in all my beloved European locales are in my mind as I faithfully push mow my own grass all summer long.
Of course it doesn’t make me a better person. It makes me a different kind of person.
If you’re one of my kind, I’ll see you in Europe.