What do I have to write about tonight? Can’t think of much. Did the usual thing at work. Came home and mowed the lawn.
The weeks of rainy weather we’ve had have turned my lawn around in a way that amazes me. Very few bald spots now, and the grass is thick—thick, I say! Like hair on an Airedale. OK, granted it’s not all the kind of grass you want, in an ideal world. When I reseeded some bare spots last year, it appears I’d bought an entirely different species of grass, one which now sits ghettoed in minority patches, agitating for equal rights and reparations. And I’ve got some crab grass, and some Creeping Charlie (I actually kind of like Creeping Charlie. And since concrete walls separate my yard from both my neighbors’, so I can’t infect their lawns, I see no reason not to indulge it).
But it’s thick! It covers the ground. Back when I lived in Florida, I used to think back on a lawn almost precisely like this (my aunt’s in St. Paul, which I’d often mowed). For all its departures from canonical orthodox lawndom, folks in Florida would have paid big money to have this kind of thick, green grass. And often did.
What I wrote above is deeply disturbing to me. All my life I’ve been a guy who’s “not into lawns.” I used to say, “Show me a guy who keeps a perfect lawn, and I’ll show you a guy with a lousy marriage.” My dislike for golf springs mostly from my distaste for broad expanses of mown grass. My original intention in buying a house was to get a townhouse, so somebody else would do the lawn.
And here I am now, taking an interest in my lawn.
I must be evolving into a better, finer soul.
I hate it when that happens.
If I ever start talking about aerating and water features, somebody do an intervention.
I’ve always figured that anyone who spent more than an hour a week mowing and trimming was wasting valuable time that could be spent more productively. I’ve been enjoying the fact that it’s been dry enough here in the North Country that I haven’t had to mow in a month.
Unfortunately, I keep moving into parsonages where my predecessor was an avid gardener who spent every waking moment pruning the yard into oblivion. That leaves me with tons of flower beds and ornate landscaping to maintain. On the other hand, they usually leave behind enough perenials so that it takes two or three years before the yard looks really bad.
And as GreyBeard undoubtedly knows, parishioners tend to have a sense of ownership (legitimately, of course) for the parsonage which predates one’s own residence there, and so occasionally some will remember what another pastor did with the yard a bit too fondly.
Which strangely connects with my other point: I suppose true canonical orthodox lawndom would require that one’s lawn have legitimate succession from someone else’s lawn, all the way back to the Garden of Eden. :O)