For several days starting late last week we enjoyed a much-needed taste of spring that felt wonderful and exhilarating. Not more than a week prior the high had struggled to reach 16 degrees, and the ground was covered in snow. On the last day of our brief warm spell, I could find only one lonely pile of snow sitting on the north side of our house. By evening it, too, was gone.
I’m pretty sure every bicycle, tricycle, skateboard, scooter, motorcycle and wagon in the city was dragged out of storage last weekend as everyone stumbled out of their houses like bears after a long hibernation.
I did a lot of walking through the neighborhood, and noticed quite a few people raking their lawns. I winced in sympathetic pain. The lawns are still dormant after coming out of the deep freeze in only a few short days. And the ground is still mushy from melting snow. Raking a lawn in such conditions can injure delicate grass roots and damage the soil structure of the lawn. Eventually I saw so many people raking that I fantasized about handing out Lawn Abuse Citations. Please, just STOP!
Monday was the best and final day of winter’s reprieve. The temperature climbed into the low 70s and the wind was relatively calm. I even cracked open a few windows.
Just before suppertime I could hear a buzz in the distance. At first I thought someone was running off the gas from a snow blower. As the noise got louder and closer I realized it was a lawn mower. Yup, the neighbor who mowed his lawn on April 11th last year had decided to shatter that record by almost a month.
As incredulous as I was, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I figured maybe he had a lot of leaves in his lawn and was mulching them. I craned my neck out the door for a better look. Nope, that lawn didn’t have a speck of leaves on it. Maybe he was running it back and forth a few times to see if it needed to be taken in for a spring tune-up. Wrong again. He mowed the entire yard. It took more than 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, our lawn looks like this—snow mold and all. The grass isn’t even standing up yet, so even at the lowest setting (golf-course-putting-green) I’m not sure what he thought he was cutting.
Meanwhile, winter is back for the next week or so, and it’s predicted to be a cool spring. Thankfully our little preview of fresh air and warm breezes was just enough to tide me over until winter loosens its grip for good.