A LITTLE LAUGHTER The call of the mower is just too great

No Mow May is a no-go in our house.

My husband reviles dandelions and adores mowing in equal measure. When the last snowbank finally melted in mid-April, he looked outside and exclaimed, “Vroom. Vroom. Time to mow!”

I gently broke it to him, “I just read in the paper that it’s No Mow May. Maybe you should park the ride-on until June.”

He took it like a trooper. “Have you been sniffing glue again? Why in God’s name would I do that?”

When I explained it was to help the bumblebees pollinate, he looked at me like I’d asked him to go shopping for essential oils with me while on fire.

When we moved in 2007, after an extensive search, we narrowed it down to two houses. One had a dreamy mudroom with shiplap walls, a built-in bench with storage underneath, polished nickel hooks for coats and overhead shelving as far as the eye could see … not that I even noticed.

The other one, the one we ended up buying, had a closet for a mudroom but the oversized backyard made my husband weak in the knees. He took one look at it, pursed his lips, shook his head and pretended to be upset, “Darn it. If we buy this house, I’m gonna need a ride-on mower to get through that!”

I pretended to be upset too. “Darn it. If we buy this house, I’m gonna need a sledgehammer to take that outdated kitchen down to the studs!” We can call it even.

Before we’d unpacked, there was a new John Deere ride-on in the garage. Since then, he’s spent some of his best years fighting the lawn, one blade of grass at a time. He takes his lawn ranger title very seriously, including his uniform

- a ripped and stained T-shirt, noise-cancelling earplugs, safety goggles and steel-toe rubber boots, regardless if it’s 100 degrees outside. Hands off, ladies. He’s mine.

He takes great pride in our manicured lawn and, to this day, we can’t bring up the Summer of the Chinch Bugs. Oh, how it haunted him. He’d drag me outside and point at a bald patch in the middle of the grass, “Look at that! We’re going to need a new lawn if this keeps up!”

I tried to support him as best I could.

“I hate to see you suffer like this. Let’s rip it up and put in a pool.”

I don’t think he heard me over the shrill buzzing of the whipper snipper.

My husband is not a dramatic person by any stretch, except when it comes to lawn care - then there’s a lot of head-shaking and tsk-tsking as he walks me through his struggle to keep dandelions at bay while maintaining that lush, green carpet.

He sighs and says things like, “Good Lord, I have to mow again!”

I try to support him as best I can.

“I hate to see you suffer like this. Let’s rip it up and put in a pool.”

He never hears me over the roar of the mower.

Recently, he upgraded to one of those zero-turn rideon mowers and I’ve barely seen him since. Apparently, it’s the cat’s meow with features like mulch control, two-coil suspension, cupholders and a seat massager; it’s a resort on wheels is what it is. He doesn’t fool me anymore with his head-shaking and tsk-tsking. He’s died and gone to heaven and he knows that I know it. It’s what I like to call a bargaining chip - one I plan to cash in for a new gazebo where I can enjoy the summer with no mo’ mosquitoes.

Colleen Landry is a high school writing teacher, author of humour book Miss Nackawic Meets Midlife and co-author of the Camelia Airheart children’s adventure series. She and her husband are empty nesters in Moncton, N.B. Their two grown sons have ditched them for wider horizons. She is filling the void with Netflix, dark chocolate and Cabernet Sauvignon.