A mowing chore that’s worthy of Fenway

With the first sun-drenched days in recent memory arriving last weekend, I found myself as eager as a rain-drenched tourist driving a gas-guzzling SUV to soak up some rays in Vacationland. The last thing I wanted to do on those precious sunny days off was a chore such as mowing the lawn, especially since mine was 7 inches high, and promising to demand multiple mowings to cut the blades down.

Thanks to a home-grown wedding in the neighbor’s yard last Saturday, I was able to put the task off for one glorious day. After all, it would hardly be neighborly to drown out their “I dos” with the roar of my grass-cutting machine. But it was a different story by Sunday afternoon. With no nuptials to trump yardwork, and no joy in Mudville to keep me glued to the tube, I knew I would have to tackle my lawn. Just as my nearly nonexistent tan would improve if I chose to sunbathe, so would my lawn’s height, possibly growing too tall to be conquered by the mower. I simply could not neglect the lawn any longer.

Taking out my electric mower, I fussed with its shocking-orange electric cord for the umpteenth time. All of my efforts to coil the 100-foot cord before storing it between mowings always fail to keep the thing tangle-free. By the time I straightened it out, I was inwardly cursing the Red Sox for losing to Chicago. If only they’d gone into extra innings, I’d have had the excuse to let my green grow more monstrous for one more day.

I knew crabbing about my crab grass had its limits, so I decided at last to get on with the task, and pushed my mower into the kelly-green waves of blades laid out before me.

Mired in mounds of tall grass, the mower made progress that was painfully slow. It was clear, the lawn was going to need lots of back-and-forth mowing to capture and cut the tall blades that were pushed down as the machine made each pass.

I was sure this kind of thing never happened at Fenway. The turf there always looked perfect. That’s when visions of Sox games danced in my head. If I was going to have to mow my turf over and over again, I might as well model my work on Red Sox groundskeeper David Mellor’s outfield patterns.

Whistling “You Gotta Have Heart,” I pushed my mower in even, parallel rows across my home turf. Sure enough, the poorly cut tall grass left a definite pattern.

Then, positioning my mower at a right angle to those rows, I pushed the machine in more parallel rows across them. Presto! Thanks to a little inspiration from Fenway – and the power of positive mowing – my home field sported a basket-weave pattern worthy of the hometown team.