the smell of freshly cut grass

Summer always meant the smell of heat and hot cement and freshly cut grass and lawnmowers being pushed, pulled or driven around in people's yards.
I have seen about 1 lawnmower since arriving in Romania and having lived in a city of cement last summer, I never got to see how grass is cut.
It's not cut with a lawnmower (for the most part) in my part of the country. At first it seemed people were just going to let their grass grow. When I walked through people's yards their grass was up to my ankle, then my calves, then my knees.
"This takes care of a lot of summer work" I thought. "Just don't cut the grass."
And then I looked out my window one morning and saw my neighbor scything her yard in wide, graceful strokes. swish. swish. swish. Each swish brought down a square meter of grass.
And then she used a rake to evenly disperse the felled grass over her yard. Later that day, in the afternoon, she had made haystacks in her yard of the felled grass. Scything - pretty and practical.
And this morning, Georghitza, the maintenance man at my school who always asks me in English, "How are you?" was scything the school's yard.
I tried my hand at scything. It's not as easy at they make it look. Mine didn't go swish. swish. swish. but more like swat.swat.swat.