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Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.When battling the lawn of doom, more power doesn't always cut it By J. G. Fabiano Every so often there comes a spring on the southern coast of Maine that does not resemble any definition of what Spring should be; the air never warms past 50 degrees and rainy days vastly outnumber the sunny days. The air stays damp and our spirits mirror the gray, depressing days of a Spring that wasn't meant to be. This is the kind of Spring we are suffering through this year. My brother-in-law, who has been visiting from upstate New York, told me this was the type of Spring they were used to. In fact, he told me that because the weather pattern made our spring almost unbearable, his weather was remarkably sunny and warm this year. I then told him he could buy the next couple of rounds. What makes things even worse during this time of year is that our lawns grow at a pretty good rate. Throw in rainy conditions and the lawns that surround our homes explode into hay fields that are impossible to control. However, control them we must, even though a trek through our backyards on our lawnmowers becomes an adventure in itself. This happened to me last weekend. We had endured four wet weekends in a row and the grass around my home looked like the Serengeti Plain. The weeds developed giant mutant leaves and the dandelions had heads the size of sunflowers. Unable to wait another day to cut my lawn down to size I pulled out my trusted push lawnmower hoping it had one more mow left in it before I retired it to the great lawnmower graveyard at our local dump. I also took out my rider mower that had just been reconditioned by Sears. The maintenance man came over, as he does every year, to change the oil, plugs, filters and put on a new set of blades. He also cleans out the deck of the mower to ensure the blades can cut and re-cut the grass so raking will not be necessary. I, by the way, hate to rake because I always end up with my hands bleeding and my fingers crippled. The first area I attempted to cut was the swale around my house that kept the Spring torrents away from my home. This meant I had to walk through a kind of marsh that tried to suck the shoes off my feet while gluing my push mower to the ground. At first the mower did pretty well but as soon as I reached the part of the swale where the water flows into a pipe under the road the going got real tough. All I could hear was a kind of wet coughing as the blade tried to chew through wet grass and mud. The mower began gargling noisily and throwing up some kind of wet slime that made the entire machine shudder. But, I kept on pushing the poor thing through the marsh grass even though I knew I was pushing it to a point of no return. Then, all of a sudden, I heard a large explosion that sounded like one of my neighbors had finally taken a shot at me to put me out of my misery. I dropped to the ground and looked around; waiting for the second shot, but none came. I then noticed the mower was silent and the spark plug was dangling from the wire that connected it to the motor. The task I had assigned the push mower was simply too great and it had spat out its spark plug and died. Now I was aggravated. I'd had that mower nine years only to have it killed by the Spring of 2005. I hauled it back to the garage then took out my ride-on mower, knowing it had four times the horse power to cut down the lawn of doom. I leaped onto the shiny reconditioned machine and turned it on. It roared to life immediately, sounding like a perfectly tuned NASCAR racer. I knew that no rainy season or lawn would be a match to my monster machine. I put it in gear and turned on its four blades by pushing down on a lever that made it roar like a hungry beast. I then pointed myself at the swale that had killed my push mower just moments before. Wet grass spewed out the side of the mower and not a gurgle could be heard. I pushed the machine deeper into the swale, aiming it directly at the mouth of the pipe that had earlier proved invincible. Roaring through the helpless grass I felt all-powerful. The swale had been a worthy opponent but nothing would stop me from completing my task. Except I had forgotten one part of the swale that had nothing to do with the height of the grass. Under the grass was mud. At first I did not think this would be a problem but, the closer I got to the pipe the slower my machine ran. Right before I arrived at the spot where my other mower had spun its last blade my ride-on mower stopped dead in its tracks although the engine kept on roaring. I looked down at the transmission lever and saw it was still in its proper place. I then checked out the clutch and it was still engaged. For a few seconds I had no idea why the machine was not moving. Then I looked down at the right wheel and saw that it was spinning in a pool of muddy water that wasn't going to give it any traction no matter how hard I pushed it. As I leaned out to get a closer look the treads on the tire picked up the mud from the swale and sprayed it all over me, covering my glasses and rendering me blind. Of course I had forgotten to shut my mouth and all I could think of as I tasted the foul lawn soup was all the cats and dogs in my neighborhood that stopped by the swale to use it as a communal bathroom. I then attempted to put more weight over the spinning tire by leaning on the fender. Seeing that this was not working I tried bouncing up and down on the fender hoping the oscillation of weight would make the tire dig deeper into the mud and, thus, free my machine. All I did was dig the tire deeper into the muck. Since there seemed to be little else I could do I continued to bounce on the fender hoping that, by some miracle, my all-powerful machine would move. Then a strange thing happened. I felt the machine start to tip into the swale. Immediately I shifted my weight to the other side of the mower to arrest its momentum, but with no luck because the machine kept on tipping into the swale. It was as if I had fallen into another dimension where time slowed down. The mower kept on tilting and I felt its right side lift clear of the mud hole I was digging. I knew that if I didn't jump clear of the mower I would go over with it and maybe break something I might have use in the next few years of my life. I leaped away just before my newly reconditioned mower rolled over and landed upside down in the bottom of the swale with its four blades spinning in the air. The blades kept spinning and the engine kept roaring for another couple of minutes before the gasoline mixed with the oil inside the mower and the engine seized. Lying in the grass a few yards away I stared in disbelief as my all-powerful ride-on mower gurgled its last breath and settled silently on its back in the bottom of the swale. Two mowers destroyed in one day, I realized. Not only was this the wettest Spring I could remember, it was also the most expensive. Wiping myself off I went back to my garage to look for the phone book and see where I might rent a couple of sheep to take care of the hayfield that had been created by the Spring of 2005. The End.
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