Hello again, and welcome back to Confessions! Joy has threatened to buy me Dove for Men if I didn't get off Facebook and blog like I promised her I'd do. And you know how ... Wait. That's not much of a threat at all....
Our special of the house tonight is a meditation on yards; yards and lawns and the modern American value placed on a "beautiful" lawn are some of the most incomprehensible things in modern life today. While I certainly enjoy a good patch of grass for lying upon, I really don't understand why Joy won't let me pave the thing and let us be done with it.
Lawns, according to legend and Wikipedia, are an import from the Middle Ages' aristocracies. They'd take a section of grassland, have their peasant charges go out and cut down the over-tall sections with scythes and such, and then go out and enjoy. Eventually, with the invention of the power mower, the lawn became something semi-enjoyable, with the invention of the lawn party and the whiskey and soda. Finally, the lawn became such a barometer of gentility and social status, it became fashionable in America.
Personally, I hate it.
Don't get me wrong: I love a good meadow. I don't mind the yardwork of raking and mulching and mowing and pruning and clipping and suchlike. What I hate is the emphasis placed on the aesthetics of cow food.
Today, I mowed for the last time in the season. I usually enjoy the last mow of a season, as it means no more wandering around pushing the mower. I also usually hate the last mow of a season, as it means the next thing I do is shovel the snow. I don't mind the mower maintenance bits: running the gas out, draining the oil, scrubbing the rust spots off.
What I do mind, though, is the ChemLawn dude, coming up to my door and offering a free lawn analysis, with option to buy their services. Analyze my yard? Dude, I know it's a mess! Between the bare patches, the dandelions, the odd clumps, and the irregular texture of the ground, I'm ashamed to show it off! AND THAT'S THE FRONT YARD! The back yard, comparatively, makes the front yard look as professionally manicured as Gleneagles Golf Course (site of the 1921 Ryder's Cup).
And why am I ashamed? Because of a cultural bias that has pervaded the "American Dream". The home should have a plush, green lawn, free from weeds and other growth, that treads like carpet and smells faintly of apple pie. Mine is infested with several types of foreign flora, dog mines (anyone want to buy an older neurotic dog, cheap?), trenches, ditches, dead branches, low-lying places that are monuments to former garden plots and raspberry bushes, and a swimming pool.
Word to the wise: if you're considering buying a swimming pool, don't. Just don't. We thought that ours would provide a fun, cooling respite to hot summer days, and perhaps a cozy romantic rendezvous point for moonlit nights.
The water temperature never raised above 40 degrees. Ever. Not exactly the cooling that one is looking for on a hot summer's day, nor the shivers one wants to experience during a moonlit rendezvous.
Next year, I hope to do better. I hope to be rid of the dog (possibly by casting her in a local production of "Old Yeller," real bullets only please), thereby possibly eliminating some of the trenches and dog mines. I hope to chip and shred the dead branches, and erect a shed in the back corner. It'll be slightly sunk into the ground, making it bigger on the inside than presumed on the outside. It'll be blue, and in the shape of a Police Box, and I shall call it my TARDIS. I'll borrow a tiller, and dig up plots for my wife to plant tomatoes and zucchini and pumpkins and gourds and peppers and berries and sunflowers. I'll reseed and fertilizer the lawn, especially the parts where the dog has ruined it.
But that's only if Joy doesn't let me pave the thing before winter.
The next-door neighbor of my God-forsaken (oh I said it) house in St. Paul has carpeted his front yard. Some of it is in fact my old carpeting. It's certainly one approach!
ReplyDeleteWe were shunned by our last neighbors, in a sneaky backstabbing fashion, in a one-off manner, after failing to maintain the standards of outer-bumfuckery, Georgia's lawn-care. When we moved in I was entirely too pregnant to care about anything lower than my upper chest, and by the time winter had passed, it was hopeless. The weeds down there are AMAZING. They defied the hedge clippers.
That having been said, I grew up with a giant yard, and a small orchard, and a giant garden, and somehow I cannot bring myself to run a gas lawn mower. I had an electric one (lost in the divorce, and I'm sure his widow can afford a whole gardening fleet) and I actually used it. Maybe I should get another one. I also used the reel mower quite often (but it couldn't compete with Georgia's weeds). Maybe it will come in handy again here. Once the grass starts growing. Once it finally rains.
I am faced with the debate of investing in our yard for the sake of the baby/toddler. Should I weed and feed it, for instance, and when would I do so, since it only rains in winter here, and what grows in winter?
I am glad you didn't suggest wood-chipping the dog. Cats, maybe, but dogs deserve better.
Considering you have the toddler, may I suggest Astroturf? It's amazingly cushy and cleans up easily. And I'd never throw a dog into a 5HP wood chipper. Because I'm anti-animal cruelty. Most of the time.
ReplyDelete