Green Grass of Home
A former New Yorker discovers the joy of mowing a jungle.
I’m the quintessential city girl. I grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. So when my son was born almost five years ago, I thought the ideal place to raise him was New York City. The city had all the amenities, activities, and culture I could want. But as he grew, I realized I’d not only had enough of listening to my then-husband complain about urban life, but that it was time for us to own our own home and have our own yard for our son to play in.
Moving upstate wasn’t my first choice. I wasn’t interested in what came with it: car culture, big supermarkets, malls. I didn’t want to leave my hometown. Plus, I was used to being a tenant. Whenever something broke, when junkies trashed the front of the building, and when my crazy neighbor threatened me with a knife, I called the landlord.
However, reluctantly—after discovering that homeownership in Brooklyn would cost over $1 million—I turned my attention upstate. Friends of friends who’d moved to Beacon and raved about its burgeoning art scene piqued my interest. I drove up and met with a realtor, but I couldn’t picture living up there until she showed me a gorgeous 2,400-square-foot Victorian house on over an acre. That house captured my imagination and my heart with its stately entrance, grand wooden staircase, original moldings, and marble fireplaces. “This is like the dollhouse I had as a child!” I told the realtor. All I wanted from then on was to live in my dollhouse for real.
Little did I know what I’d have to endure to fulfill my fantasy. That fall, right after we moved, Dutchess County experienced its highest rainfall in over 100 years. Our basement flooded. What did I know about flooding? When it rains in the city, you break out a $2 umbrella from Chinatown and hail a cab. I had no clue what a sump pump was; I’d never even had to contend with a basement. Now, for three weeks, we took turns at pump duty. When my husband left at 5am to teach in the city, I headed to the basement wearing my Descamps robe and Ugg boots and stood on cinderblocks, sweeping water into a hole and manually operating the sump pump every 30 minutes. That was just the beginning. I couldn’t call the landlord. I had become the landlord. So that winter I found a plumber to fix the torrential rain shower in my kitchen, retiled the bathroom, shoveled snow, and fixed my own appliances. I amazed myself, but every time I learned something new, I’d wonder what I, the city girl, was doing.
When spring arrived it was beyond fantastic. I had spent the winter fixing things and making the dollhouse my dream house. As the weather warmed, I opened windows and read outdoors. My neighbor’s garden was famous throughout Beacon. Our property was equally incredible. Dogwoods bloomed. We had yellow forsythia, pink blossoms, blue birds, and green, green, green grass—lots of it, growing thicker and taller by the minute.
Never in my life had I experienced spring in this way, like a magical onslaught of flowers, leaves, and grass—over an acre of grass. I hadn’t thought about grass when I’d fallen in love with the dollhouse. Having never had a lawn, we hadn’t thought about lawnmowers. I left it to my tool-obsessed husband—who knew enough to swear by the Bosch Drill and Dewalt Router—to find us one. We went to Lowe’s, ready for the purchase. But after 45 minutes, my husband was still staring at the display models and our son was going bananas. An hour later, having run out of ways to amuse our son, I returned to the lawnmower aisle to find that my husband still hadn’t decided. He said he needed to think about it. We drove home confused, exhausted, and empty-handed.
For a week, we read every lawnmower review online and debated ride-on or push mowers. Meanwhile, dandelions sprouted. Finally Saturday arrived, and my husband—whose school year had ended—returned to Lowe’s. Hours passed; finally he called, asking me questions I couldn’t answer. “Come on, pick one,” I said.
Instead, he came home and went back online. On Sunday he headed off to Lowes again. I spent the day with our son, playing in the yard, pretending we lived in the jungle. My neighbors stared, aghast at our lack of care. It’s okay, I thought, we’ll fix it. But my husband reappeared at dinnertime empty-handed. “Oy vey,” I said. He needed me, he explained, to help him decide. So we packed our son into the car and returned to Lowes.
My husband had narrowed it down to two lawnmowers—both of which were out of stock. The salespeople suggested another. But I had my heart set on the self-propelling one with bigger wheels that was good on hills. I pointed to the lawnmowers on the top shelves and, in my city-girl tone, insisted, “Can’t we buy one of those?” The salespeople rolled their eyes.
A big production was made on my behalf. The aisle was secured with orange caution chains, and salespeople were stationed as guards at both ends. Someone arrived with a cherry-picker. Finally, they handed us the big box holding our very own lawnmower.
When we got home it was too dark to mow, but I went to sleep happy. The next morning, I got up and left for work wearing my favorite attire—black skirt and blazer, and John Fleuvog open-toed heels. When I got home that night, my husband was outside, mowing the lawn. I was so excited I jumped out of the car and ran that Carrie Bradshaw high-heeled run over to him. Watching my husband in action, my heart swelled. He looked like a guy who owned a house, who was painstakingly taking care of his big, gorgeous property. I didn’t bother going inside to change. I took the lawnmower’s handles and finished mowing the lawn in my black suit and fancy shoes. As the sun set on that beautiful day, I was the happiest, most stylish city girl who ever mowed a lawn in the whole Hudson Valley.
