Lo! The Morn!

Lo, The Morn! By Ronnie Bennett-Bray - Escritoire

What should a man dream of while mowing a lawn? My thoughts turn to Dandelion and Burdock, black pudding, honeycomb tripe, fish and chips...

 I had to get the mower out two weeks ago because the grass was getting its spring growth on.

 When we moved onto our place, three acres onj the edge of Montana's Kottenaimnational Forest, in August 2002, the grass had not been cut that year and stood at a good two and a half feet. While shopping for bits of furniture, we came across a brand new push rotary mower at a bargain second hand price and snapped it up.

Two years ago, I was much fitter than now. I had not had the mystery illness and my arthritis had not reached the savage proportions it was to reach a year later, so pushing the mower across an acre and a half of grass was nothing to fear.

 I fuelled up, started up, and started out, nibbling away the fringe that ran down the west side of our curved driveway and along the front of our parking area.

 It was hard work, but not that hard. At least, that’s what I told myself on the first row. I waved a cheery "I’m doing fine," to Gay who was looking out of the window to check up on my progress.

 I was doing fine. That is, until the third pass. By that time the mower was choking on a mix of new grass and the mower clippings, and my optimism plunged in direct proportion to the effort the dying motor was making to keep itself going.

 After a couple more cuts, I was ready for the bone yard and went inside to rest and take a slug of root beer.

 "You need a ride-on mower," said Gay, handing me a can of A&W’s best brown brew. It’s not as good as Dandelion and Burdock, (what is?), but it passes muster as an acceptable drink and it tastes better than the well water. Water without all those chemicals just isn’t the same. I have Huddersfield Corporation to thank for that, and the redoubtable Ben Shaw’s to thank for the Burdock.

 Gay was right. I did need a ride on. We checked our bank balance. We could just do it, but we would have to eat beans for the rest of the year!

 And that’s another thing. You can’t get beans in tomato sauce in America. Talk about suffer! There are plenty of beans, but they are all infested with pork or bacon.

 And that’s another thing. You can’t get decent bacon. American pigs only have streaky bacon and most of that is fat and it has to be crozzled to make it edible.

 And don’t mention black pudding, tripe, edible chocolate, or decent fish and chips. How we ex-pats suffer for our country. Ambrose Bierce said, "An exile is one who serves his country by living abroad."

 Back to the mower. We drove into Libby and wandered into Sears Roebuck, trying not to look rich. That wasn’t hard, because we weren’t.

 They had a nice 17 hp twin rotating 42" swathe cutter with six forward and one reverse gears and it was marked down. After haggling over the delivery charge and getting it halved, we paid the man and became the owners of a brand new ride on. "Watch out grass, here I come!"

 When it arrived, I filled it with petrol, set off on my shiny chariot meadow plants harvester, and headed into the shrubbery. Wow! Talk about ease and water by the door. This was wonderful. The surgical steel blades made short work of the grass, and the rocks hidden in the grass made short work of the blades.

 There was more to this than met my eyes! I spent half my time mowing, half taking off the blades, half straightening them, and the last half fitting them back on again. The time just flew by.

 Eventually, the grass was cut, and as I was finishing, I saw my neighbour mowing his grass on his new ride on. He had bought it second hand for just over half of what we paid. I tried not to look as green as the grass.

 He explained that he was just cutting down some noxious red weeds for me. I thought they were flowers.

 "For me?" Without batting an eyelid, I had become the father of another half-acre. Neither our property owner nor the departing tenant had been forthcoming about the bounds of our blessed plot, but it was much bigger than we had thought.

 That summer, I kept the grass at bay with the ride-on, often referred to as the bone-shaker, due to a combination of a very uneven piece of grass – a lawn it ain’t – self-multiplying rocks, and old bits of tree trunk working their way upwards through the earth at the precise moment my whirring blades pass over their tombs.

 Last year was much of the same, apart from something completely undetectable snapping seven inches off the end of one of my steel blades, and shattering the casting that holds the mandrel that holds the blade, forcing me back to Sears for replacements parts and wearing a big hole into the discount I had won at the point of sale.

 This year, I began by saving a bundle of money buying a pair of blades from eBay. After fitting them, I smugly set to mow the lawn after the unusually hot spring days had forced the greenery into an early growth.

 Getting wiser year by year, I kept the deck raised, deciding against establishing Montana’s only one-hole golf course in harmony with the principle that if I built it they will come, and kept enough length on the pasture to feed the resident deer herd.

 After a couple of hours, I had the grass lines almost straight, not quite Wembley standard, but heckish good for Montana!

 I settled down for a long rest before I would need to take another cut. Probably a month or six weeks, I thought. Lovely.

 How does the saying go? "Man proposes, and God in his time disposes!" God disposed the rain to come down in lorry loads, setting more lakes on the meadow and around our house that I thought about knocking together a Gondola and taking the locals for the trip of a lifetime in a sort of cut rate "Holidays at Home!"

 I could only stand and watch in disbelief as "the rains came down and the floods came up!" and the floods brought the grass up with them, and how.

 Today I had to take that other cut, less than two weeks after my first try. The weather man says the rains will continue all this week, and the temperatures are going to be conducive to another good spurt of growth.

 I am still finding rocks and upwards thrusting tree roots, but I am sustaining less damage than in previous years, so maybe I am getting the hang of taming the wilderness.

 The grass looks good, my body is aching, and I am quaffing root beer, but I am also dreaming of Dandelion & Burdock, black pudding, honeycomb tripe, fish & chips, proper bacon that is not honey roasted, or hickory smoked, beans in tomato sauce without pig meat, OXO gravy, Marmite, beef sausages, and Patak’s Lime Pickles.

 After all, a man has to think of something when he’s cutting the grass!

 "Lo, the morn?" I hear you ask. Oh, yes. I was not waxing lyrical. That should read, "Mow the lawn!"

 Copyright ? 2004 Ronnie Bennett-Bray - All Rights reserved