Smell of cut grass ushers in the spring

SPRING is in the air because we know that distinct smell. It’s the smell of grass being cut. People in the street have got their mowers out and the whirr of the motor mower on a Saturday morning is a telltale neighbourhood sound.

We seem as Australians to have a love/hate relationship with our lawns and our mowers.

Historically, as a country with plenty of space, people in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s spread to the suburbs where large blocks of land were available.

Moderately sized houses were being built which allowed room for a shed, a vegie patch and plenty of room for grass to grow. So push-pull mowers were all the rage but as time became more precious with ever growing families, a faster way to cut areas of grass was needed.

Enter the Victa motormower. Actor Noel Brophy in the early ’70s convinced us we could turn grass into lawn with a Victa motor-mower. Using the Academy Award winning song Zip-a-Dee Doo-Dah as a signature tune, he asked us to Zip on the Doo Dah and our mowers would magically start. Mowing would be finished in no time and presumably we still had plenty of time to hit the golf course or head off to cricket or if still September, go to the footy finals at North Hobart.

However over time, some of us, including me, began to hope our mowers would thrive on neglect.

So I would put my mower away in the shed after its last cut in March and produce it again in September and expect it to start first go. It never did or does! One hundred pulls of the cord and as many expletives later and only then after a clean of the spark plug, the mower might miraculously sputter into life.

So iconic are lawnmowers to the Australian lifestyle that they were featured in the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics.

But what does the future hold for our lawns and our mowers? As people build bigger houses on smaller and smaller blocks of land, with space needed for garages, more than one car, boats and trailers, the space left for a lawn is decreasing. Combined with this, as people move into the city into apartments and units, the need for a mower becomes less important. Maybe a push-pull mower will be all that is required. Good for exercise anyway.

I would put my mower in the shed after its last cut in March and produce it again in September and expect it to start first go

Even though there are some who hate having to mow, there are still quite a few of us who like having a green lawn and seeing new grass grow. Sure, these days water now costs, but much of that cost is the administration fees anyway. Planting new grass reminds me of a sign I once saw on a new patch of lawn, admittedly years ago. Instead of just commanding Keep off the Grass, it used a sentence that would probably go outside the off stump for many today. It read, “Please refrain from walking on the grass because like Greta Garbo, I want to be a lawn!”