The battle of the lawn

The church property takes up an entire block, the equivalent of three or four quarter-acre lots. Most lawn mowing happens on a volunteer basis, which means when people can do it. It takes a good three hours plus to do all of the property, from one street to the other, in between the church, parish house and rectory, and behind the rectory. (The back edge of the property is anything but a straight line; it tacks its way down from one street to the other.) Volunteers start with the easy, flat part, the front half of the side yard to the rectory, then work their way across the front of the parish house and church (less easy because it is on a hillside), then go behind the rectory to the nursery school play yard and by then have pooped out.

That means that the back half of the rectory yard turns into a meadow. And that means that at least once or twice a summer I get out there in knee-high grass with a simple lawn mower and try to tame it. 'Mowing the lawn' this way is anything but easy. It's a lot of yanking the mower front and backwards. Doing the front and back yards of the rectory took me four hours total, yesterday and today. But at least once again, there is the semblance of a lawn and not a meadow.

I took this shot today after I finished. The overgrown area is the garden. That's the next task. The nursery school play yard is to the right; the shed behind it belongs to the neighbours. The big maple tree is on our property; the scraggly tree on theirs. You can make out the church tower between the rectory and the maple.

Having worked on the church lawns today, tomorrow I go to our house and do the same thing all over again — deal with knee-high grass and, worse, on an uneven lawn (full of frost-heave rocks and tree stumps). Thank God for my iPod — at least I have good tunes.

Here's an assortment of some of the tunes I heard today while mowing (in a play list called Beat Music):

Laurie Anderson • Strange Angels (Strange Angels)
Michael McDonald • Sweet Freedom (Michael McDonald)
James Taylor • Only a Dream in Rio (James Taylor Best)
The Strawbs • Simple Visions (Deep Cut)
Steve Winwood • When You See a Change (Arc of a Diver)
Alain Souchon • Manivelle (Collection)
Exchange • Compass Rose (In a Changing World)
Supertramp • It's Raining Again (Classics)
Yazoo • Bring Your Love Down (Upstairs at Eric's)
Tracy Chapman • I Used To Be a Sailor (Matters of the Heart)