A Boy’s Life: Labor of Lawn

You see, I really don’t get it. I like a nice lawn and shrubbery, but I can’t understand the endless, all-consuming obsession with getting it just right, then leaving for work Monday morning. For my neighbors, it almost seems to be a calling, some vampire bite that brings on an unquenchable thirst for garden tools and a Lowe’s charge card. I go hit a large bucket of balls.
 
I step outside on an evening last January to inspect the still-falling snow, and there they are — four guys with snow blowers, revving them up, plowing through the powder, nearly colliding with one another like Boardwalk bumper cars while the sidewalk is slowly cleared, a path forged out of the whiteness.
 
“Thanks very much, Mr. Miller!” I call out as he thunders past. I make a mental note to tell Jean to send over some blueberry muffins. But as I head back inside, I can’t help but smile at the thought of my neighbors: the Suburban Leaf, Mulch, and Snow Men.
 
It’s still snowing.