The OFF Season

I like to think that gardening comes with multiple seasons: Pre-Season, The Gardening Season, Post Season, and The Off Season. In Pre-Season you take all the necessary steps for a successful garden: you plan, and dream, and look at seed catalogs. You think about what didn’t work out as well as you’d hoped and strategize ways to counteract the challenges. You buy seed and gas and fertilizer and wait for that long-awaited day of sunshine, so you can rush out and commence gardening.

Gardening Season has arrived! You plant plants! You buy more plants! You plant those! You mow the green-green grass, a favorite beverage in the cup holder! The sun shines, birds sing along with the musical metronome of the sprinkler, the air is sweet—you might even BBQ later!  Gardening Season is the Best Season!

In the Post-Season, you reflect on your harvest, tally your success and clean up your gardens. You tuck gardens in for winter, plant any bulbs you want to greet you next spring, dig up any dahlias or begonias you want to winter-over, put away hoses and tools. At some point, many people will service their lawn mowers. Or so I’ve heard. Because somewhere, in between the Post-Season and Pre-Season, is the Off Season. And that’s where I tend to be.

For me, there seems only to be two seasons: Gardening and Not Gardening and nary a thought of what I might do during the latter to make the former possible. It’s only when April rolls around and the sun comes out and I realize my grass is taller than my cats do I wonder if I have any gas in the mower...and something about an oil change, was it? Perhaps battery? Spark plug? Tune-up? So, in between rain showers, I listen to all the other mowers in my neighborhood fire up and as they begin to perfume the air with the scent of freshly mown grass, I go out and attempt to start my riding lawn mower. 

SPOILER ALERT: It doesn’t start. Even after days of being on the battery charger. I start the push mower. I begin to mow. SPOILER ALERT: Riding mower vs. Push Mower. 42” cutting deck vs. 24”; sitting down/cupholder vs. standing up/no cupholder, PUSHING; a gas tank that holds a GALLON PLUS of gas vs. a tank that holds approximately half a tablespoon. But I’m mowing!

SPOILER ALERT: my happy thoughts do not last.