Ah the glorious colors of spring; the green grass, the red and yellow flowers, the blue streak as I swear at my dysfunctional lawn mower.
After hibernating in an aluminum shed all winter, my mower is reluctant to awake and resume its normal duties of mutilating my lawn and mangling my sprinkling system. Every spring I enter into protracted negotiations with this “labor saving” device.
To begin, I check the gas and oil and press the engine primer exactly three times. These actions don’t do any real good, but like the tea ceremonies of feudal Japan, it’s important to follow all of the parts of the ritual. Assured that the engine has what it needs, I grasp the pull starter and the negotiations begin.
“Okay, here we go…” Yank.
Cough…
Cough…
“Come on, you can do it.” Yank!
Cough…cough…cough…splutter.
“Third time’s the charm.” YANK!
Cough, cough, cough, cough….splutter.
“Come on you rotten…” YANK!
Cough…splutter.
This can go for hours as I yank and mutter and the mower coughs and splutters. At some point during this process I begin to sweat heavily and start to wonder if it wouldn’t be less effort to cut the grass one blade at a time with a pair of nail clippers. I can’t give in, though. The lawn mower is a labor saving machine and I’m a guy and I’ll use the mower if it kills me. After a while the cough-cough starts to sound like laughter and then I know the mower hates me. It’s become personal and there is no way on my increasingly deep lawn that I’m going to allow this misbegotten machine to win.
Just after the chest pains start, the mower gets laughing so hard that it coughs itself to life. The spastic roar of the engine signals my victory and I’m off!
Even though I’ve been fussing with the mower for hours I feel a thrill of adrenaline as I set out across the wide expanse of thick green grass. I’ve won! I beat the the lawnmower into submission. I am invincible! I…WHACK!
Another of the rites of spring is the ceremonial decapitation of the first sprinkler head. During the long winter months, my sprinklers amuse themselves by moving to new locations. I swear it! None of them are where I left them and since I don’t really know where they are, I don’t know how to avoid them and so one of them must be sacrificed. It’s for the good of the lawn.
This, of course, signals the start of another of the rites of spring…getting the sprinkling system running again. Every Fall I drain it for the winter…generally about the time the first snow hits. In the spring I have to fill it again. There’s something fundamentally irrational about this…I take one action (emptying the system) only to reverse it a few months later. This is the kind of weird behavior you generally only see in major corporations or presidential administrations. Then again, most of them are run by guys…guys who have lawns…and lawn mowers…and sprinkling systems.
Priming the sprinklers involves a complex ritual of setting a series of valves in a particular order. All of a sudden I feel like the chief engineer on the Titanic. Only I have a much better chance of getting soaked than he did.
Once the sprinkler valves are set, I turn on the master valve. Like the mower, it’s reluctant to move after a long winter’s rest. A few choice words of encouragement from me and it turns creakily. I’m rewarded with the gurgle of water running into the pipes. Hopefully. Sometimes I’m rewarded with the gurgle of water running into my shoes.
Even when I manage to avoid that damp fate, I still have to check the system. This involves going to the control box and manually setting each of the three zones to see if the water is coming out. I’m still an engineer, but now I’m Scotty from Star Trek. “Cap’n I canna give you more water!”
As each zone starts up the neighbors are treated to a display of aquatic fireworks. This starts with a subsurface rumble as water rushes into pipes that have lain dry since Fall. In turn each of the sprinklers raises its head hesitantly as the water reaches it. A fine spray of mist escapes and the heads drop back down like shy debutants. Then the water blows out the last of the air and hits with full force. Success! The heads raise proudly in the spring sunshine sending streams of water cascading over the yard.
At least that’s how it’s supposed to happen.
In fact, the system thumps and growls and the sprinkler heads bounce up and down like demented toddlers. A few of them settle into the business of spraying the lawn, while others – especially the one I decapitated – send geysers of water skyward.
Now I’m not an engineer. I’m a battlefield commander. “We have trouble in zone two! I repeat, trouble in zone two!”
After that I spend several hours replacing sprinklers, digging to find hidden leaks, testing, re-testing, and muttering dark imprecations against the geniuses who decided that we all need lawns that look like putting greens.
Hours later, muddy but unbeaten, I’ve reached a truce with the sprinkling system. It will mostly work and I’ll mostly resist the urge to tear it from the ground. This domestic detente usually holds through the summer…so long as I don’t annihilate too many more sprinkler heads while I mow.
The final rite of spring is the creation of a list of yard projects. This list is detailed and ambitious. No one knows why I make this list, because I rarely undertake any of the projects. I’m too busy watering and mowing the lawn.
