Cutting the Lawn

May 06, 2004

Cutting the lawn. Ornamental agrarians. Unless we’re talking soccer pitch, golf course or rural landing strip this just seems like a frivolous task. It does, at least, serve to satisfy vestigial cravings brought on by suburban life. Dad comes home from a hard day on the stock market floor to get out the Toro and return to the land. He might as well grow a tail and suckle a baby on his teet. I understand the draw of the “ride-em” mower but next to a real farmer, and his/her combine harvester, you’d be operating the "Kenner Easy-Bake Oven" next to Wolfgang Puck in the kitchen at Spago.
With a push mower the lawn can be good exercise but this is rare. Lawn mowing is, more significantly, one more ridiculous attempt at imposing some imperial white order on the natural world. Gardening is art but I’m not sure about lawns. They are like the large expanse of uniform green ink in a giant tattoo of the Minnesota Wild logo emblazoned across a “neo” biker’s chest. Neo. No established biker would pick that team. The outline of the tattoo tells the whole story and doesn’t cause much pain. After its done you can understand the full intent. All the “colouring in” is 98% of the pain and only serves to decorate the actual premise. The outline is the garden. The painful decoration is the lawn. The hair that later grows to obscure the tattoo is a bed of dandelions? My uncle asks, “what good are the English if they gave us the dandelion and the sparrow” -- someone apparently missed their dandelion wine and imported it. We sent back the Canada goose to Buckingham palace to shit their putting greens silly. They sent the most obnoxious of the small birds and the natural yellow post-it note that reminds us we will never live up to our neighbour’s example. Suburbanites have lawn manicuring competitions involving intense chemical treatment and at the expense of our water supply. Folks struggle to maintain lush and green tracts in a climate that asks for burnt and brown. When the earth asks for moss we deny it. Eradicating the dandelion is way up there on the mandate. I choose the dandelion. It makes strange booze and shows up to rock the suburban world. It is the ultimate house wrecking party plant. “Dandelion” is a great name: a gad about town crossed with a a ferocious predator ruling the grasslands. Makes complete sense. I must now go out and water my dandelion crop. Countercultural irony abounds.

Eric Webster's snowboarding documentary is now available in the movie gallery.