From the time I moved out of home, there has been one thing I missed more than anything - mowing lawns.
When I was just a wee Lagoosh, it always seemed to fall to me to mow the lawns. And sure, that sometimes sucked when all I wanted to do was go hang with my mates. But most of the time, I loved it. I would look forward to tanking up the mower, nicking my brother's discman, jamming some tunes in my ears and pulling the starter chord.
Mowing lawns is repetitive - up and back, up and back, whack the corner, up and back - but there was something oddly enjoyable about that routine. You knew after so-many up-and-backs that you would be done, as long as you remembered those whack-the-corners. And the smell! There's still nothing that compares to the reek of burning mower-oil fumes mingled with freshly cut grass. To this day I still get a weird kind of comfort from that smell, something like what an ex-smoker walking past a outdoor bar - or, if you're into menthol, a raging pine forest fire - must feel.
But when you live in a student flat, people mow the lawns for you. Brilliant at first, but it gets old fast - especially early on a Sunday morning. While I still got that smell, that scent, that haze of grass still floating in the air. But I couldn't enjoy it, because I hadn't worked for it. And there is something just
wrong about enjoying something for free. At least you pay for good food at a restaurant. Or you can be genuinely thankful that the pressure is off the valve after Cindy from the classifieds has been and gone, along with
half a decent chunk of your paycheck.
Finally getting a place with a lawn which wasn't mowed by some 50-something bachelor was like a dream come true, if only for the grass. Lush green lawns, pimpled with whitehead-like daisies and glowing buttercups. Ready to be torn asunder by the spinning blades of my mower.
Which is awesome when The Swamp turns on a 24C day in October. Seriously, it's very rare for the sun to even think about coming out here. So rare in fact, that I've seen more girls in short-shorts this week than I ever did while at uni in Wellington.
Upon finishing work at 4pm this week, I managed to get home fairly early. And I saw the lawn, which I had not taken the mower to in a month. The green blades were looking far too smug for their own good. Blame beer, blame fireworks, blame rain, blame all those combined - either way, the grass hadn't been cut for quite some time and it needed to be taken care of.
There's something completely futile about lawns. What do they even do? At least flowers look "nice" and vegetables a productive. But lawns are just dumb. Useless wastes of space which could be take up by broad beans, onions, flowers, graveyards, anything but silly blades of grass. But yet, it is still so much fun to mow lawns - up and back, up and back, whack the corner, up and back.
And when they are chopped down to size, and matching blisters form on the palm of either not-worked-enough hand, there is nothing quite as beautiful as sitting down with lawnmower beer. That crisp, clean sweet fluid which has just enough bite to soothe any parched palette. The fizz scrubs the sweat from the tongue while the cool clean flavour refreshes like nothing else could.
The perfect lawnmower beer has to be lager. Much-maligned by plenty due to it being the style of choice for the bigger breweries, there is good lager to be had. Green Fern, brewed at
West Coast Brewing in the South Island, has to be one of my favourites. A pleasant grassy nose and some great biscuit flavour from the malt washes away with just enough bitterness. Clean, sharp and cooling - the perfect lawnmower beer.
Sure, there's more interesting beers out there - IIPA, imperial stout, Belgian triples brewed with the long-lost bones of Jesus - but sometimes, especially after mowing lawns, all you want is something cool to quench your thirst. Something to soothe the bones. Some beer.
So, what's your favourite lawnmower beer? Your favourite lager? Do you have a certain beer for other activities (post-football game)?
