I lose this year's annual grass cutting contest

(675 words)

Spring is when Mother Nature puts on her makeup, all purple, scarlet, pink and green. But the dominant color at my yard Sunday was yellow. Like a chicken.

Or a really big man peep.

I cut the grass — and it wasn’t even waist high. 

Regular readers are aware of my annual competition with my old buddy Paul to see which of us can be the last to cut our respective lawns.

We do it for the environment, for the inspiration and because, gee, not cutting the grass gives us more free time to watch things like major league baseball about four months before major league baseball games become even marginally meaningful.

I talked to one friend who’s already mowed his lawn 10 times. The tally proves he doesn’t own his home; his home owns him.

Me, I cut my grass just nine times all last year. I scrawl detailed records of each mow on the hood of my John Deere. The records I turn in to the IRS are less precise.

This is the first time I’ve cut my grass in April since I began keeping records. I’m sick over it. The irony — tragedy, really — is if I could have held out another 12 hours I’m sure I could have made it to May 15. The forecast calls for 10 straight days of weather too crappy to mow.

Sunday’s weather provided a window where I’d run out of excuses to avoid the first cut.

The only thing higher than my capitulation is my shame. Both now tower above my lawn.

I in 2014 set the record for latest cut. It was May 28.

Making to nearly June without having cut the grass was a revelation. I believe if I could have made it another week or two I could have bridged a point where the summer elements would have begun to kill the lawn before it needed cutting.

But with global celebrity within my grasp, I caved.

People think this is a lark, but there’s tremendous pressure to conform. It comes from neighbors, society and especially from family. My daughters began their annual pleading in mid-March when warming suns began to coax the tendrils skyward.

“Please, Daddy, cut the grass! It’s embarrassing. We look like the neighborhood hillbillies!”

Now, I love my daughters.

But I also love my planet.

Paul and I are at the vanguard of a movement that believes obsessive lawn care is bad for the environment. It wastes water, fuel, pollutes the air and kills tiny native woodland creatures.

And it sometimes kills hapless human mower operators.

Paul, a news reporter, spends part of each day, I guess, researching fatal lawn mower accidents from around the globe. He sends me the links to encourage me to stay true and stay off the mower.

It’s great having a buddy who cares!

It is a true movement. There are already stories popping up like weeds — I’m at peace with weeds, too — about anal retentive towns pestering home owners to cut their grass. 

I love being part of a movement where key participants remain stationary.

Sure, a well-manicured lawn looks nice, but so does — speaking of great grass — a happy hippie meadow.

It’s only a gentleman’s bet. Some have suggested we wager, but we think that would diminish our environmental altruism. We do it for the love of the game.

So I’ve lost this round.

Or have I? Perhaps we should factor in our excuses. Paul works a full-time job. He has little time to mow.

Having not had a job since 1992, I have no excuses. Such audacity should be a factor. And I’ll bet I cut fewer times over-all than him. 

So many elements. We need a system.

A Sabermetrics for couch potatoes!

But today it is his turn to gloat. I can anticipate his every taunt. He’ll say I’m gutless, a coward, that I couldn’t take the pressure. And he’ll be correct.

It’s one of those rare instances when cutting it proves a man can no longer cut it.

Related …

Victory lap in Mow-Town

I may never cut my grass again

Reduce deficits: grow grass (not that kind)

Growing concerns about grass/toenails

My neighbor/my Deere

Victory lap in Mow-town

My wife approached with the same look of grave concern she bore when she told me the 18-year-old cat I couldn’t stand was about to die.

“I have bad news about the new garage door,” she said. “Actually, it’s double bad news. Which do you want to hear first? The bad news or the worse news?”

Like the impending 2008 death of Buster, the foul-breathed, weak-kidneyed cat I’d stopped caring about in 2002, I knew nothing she could tell me was going to ruin my day. We’d already dipped into the savings for the $1,100 and gave it to a reputable local guy. If there was a problem, I knew it was his problem, not mine.

I feigned fragile distress.

“Oh, no,” I moaned. “I’m not sure I can take any more bad news. Start with the lesser of two evils.”

“Well, the manufacturer shipped him the wrong parts. He didn’t realize it until he’d installed it. Now, we won’t be able to open it for two weeks.”

Of course, I was right. Summer’s in the air. The one-car garage won’t be needed to shield either of our vehicles from harsh blizzards. So this wasn’t bad news. It was barely inconvenient news.

I let my face fall into my hands and began shaking my head like someone told me a minty-smelling cat I really, really cared for was about to die.

“What could possibly be worse news than that?” I wailed.

“The lawn mower’s still in there. You won’t be able to cut the grass for two weeks.”

I love this woman. She’s a great wife and mother. So it would have been unfair for me to jump out of my big easy chair and start cart wheeling around the living room while singing “Celebration!” the 1980 cheesy wedding staple by funksters Kool & The Gang.

So I stood up and strode zombie-like to the door. “I’m going to the bar,” I said. “I need a drink.”

I dashed straight to The Pond, pulled open the door and yelled a triumphant, “I win!”

I know I can’t say this without sounding like the world’s worst father, but the euphoria I felt at that moment differed little from the two times I walked through that same door and told those same men, “It’s a girl!”

Every year, we have an informal pool to see who can go the longest without having to start mowing his lawn.

This is the time of the year all our lawns seem like they’re on steroids. Mow them once and we’re bound to be mowing them every five days. I know some men who are now mowing their lawns every three days.

That used to be me at our old house where we lived for 15 happy years. I loved that little house and was peacock proud the day we paid it off. But I knew in my heart that I didn’t own that house. It owned me.

It was in a traditional neighborhood with finicky neighbors slammed right up against our fenceless borders. That meant that if my anal retentive neighbor felt duty bound to cut his grass every four days or so, then I’d have to keep up the pace or the boundary would look like the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. One side would be order and neatness while the other would be a shaggy sort of squalor.

It took about 90 minutes of grueling labor to push the old mower around all the trees, shrubs and week-old beer bottles I liked to leave around to give the place atmosphere.

Now, our new home is up a mountain deep in the lovely woods. Maybe a car an hour goes past at 50 mph. The shade from the trees stunts the scraggy patches of grass, as does the much higher elevation

So I’m now a strong contender for the last man to mow title. This puts me in a confrontational role with my buddy Paul who lives in similarly remote homestead. He goes so long into spring without mowing that his wife has lost dogs and small children in the deep, thick shag.

He was distraught when I told him my John Deere LA100 had become a ship in a bottle. He’d been confident he’d win and began griping I was cheating, it was unfair, blah, blah, blah.

Then he straightened up on his bar stool, got a glint in his eye and said he was going to try and hold out. He was serious, too.

It’s game on.

Of course, our wives think it’s ridiculous. They lament that if the men they’d married put as much thought and exertion into doing work as we do into getting out of work, they’d be married to titans of industry.

But we don’t care.

It’s just another boredom buster that gives us something about which to yap. Beats watching grass grow.