On Lawn Care

Raking in Nova Scotia in July. There's more to it than you think.

What have I become?

I bought a new rake a couple weeks ago.

We’re at that point in the process of moving into a new house where most of the big-ticket checklist items are done or at least in progress, but we’re not quite settled in.

Every day, it seems, we find ourselves missing some minor but vital item: hardware to hang picture frames, a brush to clean the barbecue grill, salt for the water softener, garage rags so I don’t stumble into divorce territory by continuing to use the pretty washcloths from the kitchen. You get the idea.

Our house in Minnesota is on a tiny, shaded lot. There’s no real lawn to speak of except for the boulevard strip between the sidewalk and the street. Despite the postage-stamp yard, I haven’t kept up with it. My farming forebears would no doubt be disappointed. My florist mother makes frequent suggestions about perennials and shrubbery. Even if I was good at these things, I rarely have the energy after a long day of work at the college up the hill.

Lawn care is a growth area for me in Nova Scotia.

There are a lot of growth areas.

But even if I didn’t know it at the time, I’ve been training for this since that first visit to the province back in 2019.

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It was July on Pictou Island. Lobster season was over and my future father-in-law, Nipsy, had turned his full attention to getting the cottage ready for our upcoming wedding. It had been a rainy couple of weeks and the ground oozed water as we bounced down the grass lane in the Toyota.

Nipsy had accurately assessed my handyman skills as lacking and doled out tasks accordingly. Hayley and I were assigned to fill the low spots in the lane with gravel. This required pulling a trailer down a rutted path, shoveling hundreds of pounds of rocks, slowly hauling our bounty back to the cottage, then—you guessed it—shoveling the same rocks again. My office-job hands grew calluses I hadn’t seen since my weightlifting days as a benchwarmer on the college football team.

After that, I was charged with assembling a new grill. Nipsy kept an eye on things to make sure I followed the instruction manual.

Chris Stafford, one of Nipsy’s fishing buddies who lives on Pictou Island, had mowed the meadow near the lane that was usually left to wildflowers. That meant we needed to rake the field.

Stafford got the project started, working the grass clippings into a pile with long pulls of a rake. Hayley and I were joined in the task by Emelyne and Matt, a couple who exist for us in a wonderful gray area between friends and family. Their Pictou Island wedding was planned for just a few weeks after ours. I was relieved that they were also a part of the summer beautification projects.

Stafford was—or pretended to be—called away to another job. We kept working. Nipsy waved at us from the passenger seat of a passing truck with a porta-potty strapped down in the back.

It was 30°C and humid. Fair-skinned Hayley and Matt were burning. Between the horseflies and the hay, we slapped and itched as much as we raked. In the distance, Nipsy directed the installation of the plastic outhouse at the edge of the woods. It’s not every day that there’s a wedding on Pictou Island, much less two of them in a month. Special arrangements had been made.

The un-mowed and un-raked field in question.

We’d filled and hauled away several trailer loads of clippings. I was worried that we’d drink the whole weekend’s supply of Big 8 bottled water. Heat stroke seemed like a possibility, then a likelihood. I remembered the brochure I’d seen in the cottage earlier. “Please Don’t Die on Pictou Island” was printed on the front cover. I should have read it more carefully.

We had a third of the field remaining when Nipsy pulled up on the four-wheeler with a lawn sweeper attached to the hitch.

He zoomed back and forth a couple dozen times. Suddenly, we were done.

“I wondered why you guys decided to rake by hand,” Nipsy grinned. “But it was your project.” He shrugged. I decided he liked me.

I pulled steaks out of the fridge and started the grill. It was becoming my go-to move when it was time to show that I had something to offer.

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After a simple dinner with Hayley earlier this week, I wandered around our yard looking at the trees and flowers in the evening sun. Duke meandered along beside me.

We have little apple and pear trees out back. Should I prune them this fall? How long would it take for them to bear fruit? I added it to the mental list of things to look up later and wondered if—

“Do you like our yard?” Hayley asked from the deck.

She was leaning on the railing. I hadn’t realized she’d come outside.

I’d mowed the lawn in the morning and ended up with some wet clumps of grass out front, near the big hole at the edge of the yard that’s surrounded by rocks and dirt. We’re getting ready have a new septic system installed. Arrangements must be made.

While Hayley was doing class prep in the afternoon, I’d been outside using my new rake to clean up the fresh-cut grass.

I remember thinking: even if it’s just once, even if it’s just for today, I want to have a yard that’s perfect.

And it was.