A Boys Life: Labor of Lawn
My current suburban abode is nestled between homes occupied by two of your quintessential Suburban Landscape Beasts. Mr. Miller is a 24/7 tinker — like the Irish gypsies of old — who for years kept a small boat and the cab of a truck in his yard. He’d be out back every Saturday and Sunday, mowing, painting or sawing — all while his three poodles yapped like they’d caught the rage virus in 28 Days Later. Sometimes I’d run into him on my way to play golf: me with the collared shirt and telltale golf cap on, Mr. Miller in the flannel shirt and floppy hat. “Hi, Mr. Miller!” I’d shout over the hedge trimmer. He’d wave and trim the same branch a third time.
My other neighbor, Steve, makes Bob Vila look like Oscar Madison. This is a man, bad back and all, who climbs up on his roof and uses a leaf blower to get every single leaf off his roof. Of course, this is when he’s not resurfacing his driveway every two months or edging his lawn to a rapier-like sharpness.
Don’t get me wrong: My house’s landscaping and lawns are kept nice, neat and green by a legion of newly sworn-in Americans who swarm over it once a week and then descend like locusts on some other home up the street. My wife Jean does a great deal of yard work, too.
I do some work outside, raking leaves being the best example. Each fall, Jean will insist we go outside on a few Saturdays, me with my Manute Bol-sized rake in hand, to gather up some three million leaves into biodegradable bags. I don’t mind; it’s good exercise, and you do feel virtuous for getting it done.
Nevertheless, it’s still makes me feel … different. Because I don’t look forward to it like my other guy neighbors seemingly do. I actually wait until the leaf has fallen from the tree to rake it up. It seems most suburban men, rakes at the ready, stand and stare at the tree, willing the damn thing to drop.
Come spring, the neighborhood is engulfed by another substance: mulch.
My neighbor directly across the street, Rick, gets a truckload delivered each May and immediately sets about with an immaculate wheelbarrow, expertly jamming about 15 tons of it around every tree, shrub, pet and inanimate object around his house. Suburbanites love this stuff, because it looks good and, I suspect, because it leaves less grass to cut. Jean orders a biannual load for us to spread around, too. But I can’t keep up with the Mulch Men.
