Mow Your Lawn
May 2025
I love to mow the lawn. There’s something deeply, perhaps spiritually, satisfying about pushing my mower in careful patterns around the yard. Beginning with the edges, I carve a clean, crisp perimeter. Then I carefully approach the center, crafting a series of pleasing parallel stripes with smiling deliberation.
With each round, I alter the direction of my mowing pattern in accordance with advice from turf experts. The gurus say we should switch up the patterns for grass health, keep our mower blades sharp, and feed the lawn a healthy diet of nutrients and water.
After mowing, I break out the trimmer. A little edge work brings the project together, and I finish the whole affair with my leaf blower, clearing away clippings and debris from the deck and sidewalks.
My lawn is not huge, so the whole undertaking lasts less than one hour. When I’m finished, I step back and survey the scene. In under 60 minutes, I’ve taken an unruly and fast-growing spring lawn from shaggy disarray to clean-striped nirvana. The process and the outcome fill me with a tangible sense of accomplishment, a feeling of peace and control.
As a kid, my parents made me mow the lawn as part of my rent. I didn’t particularly love mowing back then; it was just a chore to check off the list once a week. But as adulthood and my education career have progressed and evolved, my love for mowing the lawn has grown like Kentucky blue grass.
In 2016, I delivered a speech to a group of school leaders in Cody, Wyoming. By this point, I’d put two and two together, realizing why I relish lawn mowing so very much. My thesis statement went something like this:
I love mowing the lawn because I see instant results from my effort. An hour behind the mower yields tangible outcomes, and this is something my soul very much needs to balance the challenges we face in education. As school leaders, it’s often very difficult to see our progress. We set annual improvement goals, establish five year plans, and foster the learning of students who spend thirteen years in our systems. Everything is long term and slow moving. That’s why it’s essential, for our mental wellbeing, to mow the lawn.
I’ve shared this message with educators numerous times over the last nine years, and I’m back at it again today. As you head into the summer months, whether that means time off or simply some time to slow down, I implore you to mow the lawn, whatever that means to you. Find a task where a little elbow grease yields quick and tangible results. Maybe paint the bedroom, stain the fence, clean out a storage closet, weed the garden – anything that gives you pleasure and positions you for some short-term satisfaction.
Education is a challenging field, with plenty of stress and fatigue, both mental and emotional. This summer, find a little balance by mowing the proverbial lawn. If you want to compare notes, I’ll be pushing Old Red back and forth with care and precision, healing a little with each cleanly cut stripe.
