June 25

The roadsides are being mowed today in our area. We heard the cutter moving slowly down the road up from Sunset Lane, the yellow tractor with its outrigger arm reaching over the top of the tall grasses, weeds, and wildflowers that have filled in the shoulders and ditches of the road. It is a primitive looking machine, with rotating chains affixed within a bulbous housing on the end of the arm, lowered so that the movement mashes and threshes plant and shrub alike.

We could smell its coming soon after we heard it, for the slight southern breeze carried all the scents of crushed foliage and stems, volatiles that spoke of shredded greenery – a decidedly Earthy yet acrid smell.

It is a necessary thing to mow the roadsides, lest brush and vine creep ever further toward the road, but I miss the tall grasses gone to head, hawkweed and vetch tucked within, and campion just now, let alone the creeping vines and poison ivy.

The noise is a nuisance as is the shredded devastation the roadside will bear for a few weeks until new growth takes hold. It will assuredly be green again in no time.

Mr. Cournoyer remembers when the roadsides were cut by hand, done by the Urbanovitch brothers years ago, with scythes in hand they’d spend days moving up one side of the roads then down the other, sweeping back and forth.

I imagine the cut look, where weed and grass lay flat, newly shorn and more tidy than the threshing they receive now by machine.