Episode 9: The grass is not always greener

I love to garden. It all started when I would trail behind my father as a toddler, helping him weed and watching him mow the lawn. I was desperate to get big enough for him to let me mow the lawn with the power mower. When I was about 7-1/2, he finally let me try it and I was hooked for life. I don’t think he ever mowed the lawn again because I always got to it first.

When our lawn was growing fast in the summer, I would sometimes mow it more than once a week, so determined was I to have it look perfectly trimmed and green at all times. When I wasn’t mowing it, I was either setting up the sprinkler or wandering around with a weeding tool to remove any weed that had the audacity to come up in my pristine lawn. The two neighboring yards on either side of ours were rarely up to my exacting standards, so I started expanding my work to include their side yards, figuring it made everything look better if there wasn’t a visible line where my good lawn abutted their mediocre lawns.

One Saturday morning, I got carried away and mowed one neighbor’s entire yard without their permission. I went to their front door when I was done, not to apologize for waking them on a Saturday morning or for mowing their lawn without asking. No, instead, I brazenly stuck my little hand out and said, “I just mowed your lawn! Five dollars!”

Who could resist a little girl with a mower? I got the five dollars, but I didn’t push my luck and try that again.