Lo-Fidelity: Confessions of a lawn guy — Part 7, check expiration date

I really don’t know how much longer I can do this crap. I’ve been mowing lawns professionally in Aspen since 6th grade. The summer of 1979, I somehow convinced my neighbor on West North Street to let me mow their lawn with my parents mower for 15 bucks. I administered the finishing touches with a corded weedeater, the extension cord hopelessly tangled like a knot of pasta. 

Still, I find a solemn refuge in mowing lawns. They say a man can use his back or use his brain for a living. I try to employ both. I do some of my best intellectual work mired in thought behind a lawnmower. Put on my Bose noise-cancelling headphones, a live bootleg recording, and I’m 200,000 light years from home. I fancy myself Mother Nature’s hairdresser, listening to her woes and gossip, massaging her scalp with a rake, giving her a haircut, then a nice blowout. Your lawn is my canvas, the mower my brush. At my largest account, I’m dancing on the grass ceiling of one hundred bucks a cut. Look at me now, mom. I’ve grown with the grasses of Aspen.

In humbling retrospect, mowing lawns in Aspen has been very, very good to me. Back when I first started, there were few houses in the west end with sprinkler systems, and one, maybe two landscape companies. Everyone mowed their own lawns. Sometimes, I feel like I invest more emotion in my client’s lawns than they do. If I were a billionaire, or even a junky hundred millionaire, I’d still mow my own lawn.

In the past five decades, Aspen’s lawncare and land-scraping business has ballooned into a gas guzzling, chemical-spewing, multi-million dollar behemoth. Some despise the lawncare industry and mock those like me in the trade. Others bristle at the crews (often immigrant labor playing right into the angry catcher’s mitt of partisan politics), trucks, trailers laden with equipment, the cacophony of associated noise, and oh … the hateful leaf blowers (cue letters to the editor). 

When I finish quiet quitting, I’ll be abandoning the tried trade at a good time. I must admit — the advent of electric mowers, trimmers, and blowers has made the industry slightly more audibly palpable. If you’re a local kid looking for guaranteed work, there’s ample opportunity in Aspen’s pampered rough.

This summer’s proved brutality, weakness, and vulnerability in the lawncare industry. The sun’s been beating down upon terra firma like Thor’s molten hammer. The rivers are groaning a collective sigh under a remorseless orange heat lamp. I’ve morphed into a vampire who cowers at direct sunlight. 

Turn-ons: wives who mow the lawn. Turn-offs: people who cut their lawn too short. The lawns around here (like the locals) are notoriously finicky. They guzzle water like drunken sailors. Cut them too short and you’ll be singing the Kentucky bluegrass blues; the grass will turn yellow and brown overnight like a banana or an overripe avocado. Resist the temptation to assert dominance over nature by scalping your lawn, an exercise in futility if there ever was one.

I’ll bet you a hundred bucks that men who cut their lawns short also have serious manscaping situations going on underneath their clothing — like naked apes, I imagine, shaved their chests, arms, legs, probably even dangling man-parts. Full disclosure: I have an electric Oster trimmer, and it’s easy to get over zealous, dare I say “creative,” with body-hair removal. I used to trim my leg hair while immersed in my bike-racing phase. Mea culpa 2.0 — I also just had my nostrils waxed. I’ve been sporting short hair the past couple of years, so clearly I have landscaping issues of my own. One season, I even wore a beard like a makeshift wannabe Highlands ski patrol costume, but it looked weird.

My insider’s secret to a thick, lush, deep-green lawn? It’s simple really: Set your mower on the highest setting, mulch, and let the grass fill-in. Then put down a bag of organic fertilizer. Lather, rinse, and repeat. Like protecting (my) balding ski bum’s scalp, the tall grass shades itself and requires less water. My ethos? Messy-lawn vitality. The look I go for is verdant ’70s shag carpet, a disco-style untrimmed bush. A healthy lawn eats its own trimmings for lunch. Give more than you take. Your lawn should beckon you to shed your shoes and walk barefoot through the grass. My ultimate goal is to foment lawn-envy. 

Did you ever call a service provider to come over to your house and fix an appliance, and they go off on some rant about something that has jack-diddly to do with the task at hand? You’re listening awkwardly thinking to yourself, “Man, this dude’s been out on the field too long.” When it comes to the local lawncare industry, there are multitudes of colorful, eccentric characters. And by colorful and eccentric, I mean stone cold, card-carrying crazy. How do I know? I’m one of them. To do what we do consistently, punctually, with a smile, year after year, you have to be. We’re a tight-knit bunch. When longtime lawn-man Billy Cirelli finally retired, I could finally see the faint likeness of an “out.”

Frankly, I’m surprised I’ve never cut my foot off and still have all of my fingers, but alas, the night is young. Hopefully, in lieu of retiring, I can be the first lawn guy in Aspen to be replaced by an automated, lawn-mowing AI robot. Now, wouldn’t that be amusing? I’ll gladly take the claim to fame.

Contact Lorenzo via email suityourself@sopris.net.