"The neighbor behind us once put up a high white vinyl fence. It’s a long solid fence which encloses only two sides of his yard. The fence can’t keep anyone in or out. It was meant to be more like a screen, a smoke screen perhaps, for the neighborhood kids down the road who were often out of control. His new wife was all for it. He was unsure. Was afraid I’d be unhappy, because nobody really has fences where we live. But I was happy to have it. I like the fence because, although it’s relatively new, it’s getting old fast. Time is quickly making it green, even though it’s white vinyl and is advertised as time-proof.  “Watch with affection the way things grow,” someone once said. It even applies to fences. They don’t grow but they certainly age. Sometimes in the distance, at dusk, before dinner, I hear the voices of his little children. His children can’t climb the fence, but their little voices certainly can, especially when it gets toward the end of the day."

zero turn When Nicky was still a little boy he was already cutting the grass. He used Mike’s riding mower. Mike is our next door neighbor who has seven acres of land, but most of it is woods running back to the creek. That's where the kids and the dogs played when the kids were growing up. The creek runs around behind us and then goes under the road and eventually winds up at the lake past the park. Years ago Mike stopped cutting the back piece of his land, and the woods grew up fast. But we have less than two acres. It was always two acres too much for me. In South Philly our backyard was a rectangle, and we used a hand mower. You pushed it, and that made the blades turn. But out here in the country I had to cut the grass riding Mike’s gas mower for nine years, every day of which I swore that when Nick was old enough he’d take over the job, plus cut Mike’s as well, which is what he did. I never liked riding the gas mower. It’s loud and it stinks and it kicks up a ton of allergies and when the job’s done, you’re running inside to shower off. Although afterwards, it’s wonderful how peaceful and green everything looks. I think grass genuinely loves to be cut. It gives a long sigh of relief once it’s cut. When it sighs it exhales, and the breath of cut grass is a sweet perfume. The whole yard feels happy. My wife also feels happy. I like grass when it's cut, but I don't mind it when it's not cut either.

I call it a yard but it’s just the land around our small house. No fences, except for one little fenced in area left to us by the previous owners, but that fencing has all crumbled and only a few posts and some wire still stand. They used to keep their dog penned in that place. When Berry died we put her there. We have a few cats buried there as well. The cats don't have gravestones, but Berry does. She has a small grave, with the soil still mounded up a little, and some cobblestones around the edges. I like the look of things as they decay, such as that old fencing. We had to pull a few of the posts out when we put a propane tank nearby, but otherwise the posts have been left alone, and their wood has rotted over time, and the posts that have fallen over have been carted off, but many of them, especially the ones up front which are shaded by some weed trees and weed vines, have remained intact. I don't often go into that little area, only sometimes if I see that the plaque on Berry’s grave needs to be adjusted, for example. My wife made that plaque, fired it in her kiln, and it says “a good dog, well loved by her family, she loved them well in return.” We had her fifteen years, from an eight week old pup to her dying day when she keeled over by the road in front of our house. 

A neighbor who had been driving by saw her there, and this good woman pulled her car over and knocked on my door. And then a passing township policeman stopped and helped me carry Berry to the side yard. Nick was in high school at the time, and my wife called the school and they let him come home and Nick and I buried her. Nick used to go on long walks with Berry, and the two of them were good friends. After Berry died I didn't want to get another dog, but Nick said that he wanted a dog, and finally I said Okay, we can get another dog, but first you have to clean out the basement. Which is what he did, and he did it all by himself too. The truth is, I was amazed he was able to do it, because that basement was piled high with junk. I had them drop a dumpster in our driveway, and he filled that thing up. We had to do it when my wife wasn't around or she would've inspected every piece going out. She doesn't believe in getting rid of things. For me and Nick, getting rid of things is practically a religion. And afterwards we got another dog, and her name was Georgia, and she and Nick used to go on long runs through our township. By this time Nick was on his high school football and wrestling teams, so Georgia joined him on his workouts at home. She was called Georgia because when they brought her into the pound where we adopted her the famous Ray Charles song was playing on the radio, and the lady who was in charge of the pound gave her that name, and we kept it.

Anyway, when Nick was nine years old it seemed like he was ready to handle the job of riding Mike’s John Deere mower, and Mike agreed, and sure enough Nick was ready. He’s been cutting the grass ever since, even though in the meantime Mike got a new mower, and this is one of those new zero turn models which makes it easy to zip around trees and other obstacles. My problem is that the zero turn, the way it operates, looks sinister to me. Nothing running on wheels should be able to turn on a dime like that. It's not natural. It's not as if you see the driver working hard and he's turning the steering wheel and then the machine responds. The zero turn doesn't have a steering wheel. So you see no action on the driver's part. He looks immobile, like a statue. He's a statue on a lawn mower that has no steering wheel. He's holding onto the vertical handle bars, which is how you steer the zero, and he does nothing more than lift his little finger. And the zero spins around a single point effortlessly. It's a ballet dancer with rivets which spits out gas fumes. It comes out of some creepy movie. But we have plenty of trees, so the zero turn is a real time saver. You zip right around the tree and head off to the next one. After the long Winter is over, and Spring makes it clear it’s finally going to stick around, it’s great to see the grass growing fast, even though it means the mower is coming around the bend. Everything's popping. All the little flowers jump out overnight, and suddenly the bugs are floating like dust particles through shafts of sunlight. But soon enough the wife says, "That grass has got to be cut. It’s getting too long." She says it to me, but I look right over at Nick. He doesn't say a word. He doesn't need to. He's on it. And when the grass is cut the first time, maybe you’ll go outside on the porch and look at all the new trimmed greenery and smell the great smell of cut grass, and you know for a fact that Spring is here, and thank goodness Winter is finally over.