Lawnmower Country Life

It’s after 8 pm. The lawnmower purrs, more like a rattling loud hum, three doors down from where I am staying with a friend. The Doppler effect is in full motion here, I note, as the sound increases and decreases.

A Carolina wren or is it a hooded warbler chirps, settles in for the night while a Northern Bobwhite signals to a mate news about the immediate vicinity. The neighborhood I see from the second floor deck is one filled with locust, ash, catalpa and other leafy specimens of healthy foliage.

Two days ago I photographed my friend as she rode her bright shiny green lawnmower over her slightly sloping property. Not an outdoorsy person, she maintains she loves mowing her lawn this way and would not consider having anyone else cut her grass. Meditative she says. I believe her as I think how long distance driving provides that meditative feeling for me.

Three days ago, as I napped, or tried to do so, her neighbor, the one with the picturesque backyard pool and outdoor kitchen exhibited his lawnmower behavior under my window, awakening me from deep sleep at least twice. Two doors up last evening, another mower voiced his or her enthusiasm for cutting the grass.

Not cutting the grass, allowing dandelion or some other greenery considered to be a weed, is enough to get you talked about as a bad neighbor in this area. It’s true that neighbors rarely talk to one another, instead remotely opening their garage door, driving in, closing it in the same manner and never interacting with any other.