Our timing could not have been better in terms of maximizing the growth of the lawn during a one week vacation. The entire week prior to our vacation, it poured rain, ensuring that I could not top up the lawn mowing (so to speak) before leaving. The first weekend we were away, it was dry and there was a heat wave. Nothing grass loves more than nice hot sun after being soaked for days; I say ‘grass’ here when I really mean clover, violets, catmint, et cetera. When we returned not only was the crabgrass tall enough for Jack to scurry up it, all the regular grass had also gone to seed. Great for reseeding the lawn and attracting pollinators, not so great for mowing. And, of course, it was still raining.

Normally I’m not that fussy about the lawn and relatively impervious to the fear that the neighbors will judge us on the basis of the state of the grass. Still, this was a little much, and it drove me to use the hour by hour weather prediction feature on my preferred weather website to find the earliest time this week that would have the maximum drying time prior to mowing and enough time prior to more rain to get the whole lawn cut; that time was 12pm yesterday. Thankfully, it was still cool, as 12pm is not typically my first choice for lawn mowing. I hauled the electric mower out of the garage and went to it. The mower performed valiantly—I only had to stop twice to clear the blocked chute thingy through which the cut grass gets thrown out onto the lawn—but it really was no match for the situation, what with having to avoid running over the cord and the one wheel that likes to reset its height as you go and the screws on the handle that like to rattle themselves loose. The mower itself is a tank, a Black and Decker that was given to us by my friend’s mother when we moved in, so in terms of plowing through a meadow it’s a good choice. For regular everyday use, I’m looking forward to the time I can get a zippy new generation Neuton. I’ve been informed in no uncertain terms that time will be when the current mower is dead, a category for which one gimpy wheel, some loose screws, and a missing rubber flap does not yet qualify it.

The nature of the lawn, as I’m sure you know, is that it grows. The nature of my mowing of the lawn is that I invariably omit to mow one of the tucked away parts of the lawn. This time I remembered the bit up by the stairs to the basement around the side of the house—which was, as the kids say, out of control as I’d forgotten it the last two times—and forgot the section outside the back gate along the alley and the bit by the garage on the other side of the walk. I’ll get back to them when it stops raining.