No I am not out at the store late at night picking up pickles and ice cream, I am out hewing my lawn.
I have been busy playing with my girls, The Mermaids, and recently my lawn has been left to fend for itself like a teenage party. The dandelions have clearly bullied my grass around a little bit and taken it’s lunch money and it is out of control. Something had to be done, so my neighbors formed a posse and one of them drew the short straw, let’s call him G.
G came over to inform me that “they”, let’s call them They*, were worried about my ominous dandelions. They didn’t really care that I had dandelions per se, but They rather didn’t like the idea that they were two feet tall, gone to seed, and looking to crash a more civilized lawn party.
Basically They didn’t want my chocolate in Their peanut butter.
And frankly I don’t blame Them, I can’t blame Them. If I spent the kinda money and time and effort and poison into making sure my peanut butter was as rich and creamy as Theirs I wouldn’t want some neighborhood punk wingin’ around a bag of plain M&M’s carelessly daring one to fall into my jar.
So, I says to G, I says
Yeah, I gotta do something about that.
I don’t think he got a warm feeling as I continued to build my Treatise on Horizontal Space. So, later that day I made a token effort at knocking off the seeds by, ironically, watering the beastly things but it was at best a temporary fix. I ran my push-mower over them but the cowards simply bowed gracefully out of the way and jeered my retreat.
I refuse to use poison, there is the Kyoto Protocol to respect, and so I was resigned to replacing a Mermaid afternoon on some near-term weekend with a merciless Bully Whipping with my Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome 5 HP Electric Whipper-Snipper arg Arg ARGH!
But then G caught Ang this morning and apparently They weren’t as keen on waiting for this purported, near-term weekend as I. Again, can’t blame them since purt near eight or nine ‘near-term weekends’ have blissfully ignored the Rave in my side yard. But still I have The Mermaids to think about, my horizontal space to consider, and 500 hours of work this quarter to plan. I’m swamped!
It was what G said next that caught my ear,
Don’t be proud.
You can borrow my lawn mower.
It is kind of advanced, you know, with 6 speeds [and so on and so forth]…
I coughed, when she told me that, and nearly spilled my Earl Grey. Proud? Did he really say Proud?
My pride, if that was what it was, would casually drop off a PDF describing what lawn poison does to mermaids.
My pride, if that was what it was, would water the beasties AFTER I cleaned up the seeds…with a leaf-blower.
My pride, if that was what it was, would…ack! It has nothing to do with pride! Everything to do with principles: No gas, no landfills, no poisons, no cash paid for an overpowered engine mounted to a dullish rotor that thrashes all dignity out of every last stem, and most importantly NO unnecessary time spent away from The Mermaids. Oh, okay, and maybe throw in just a small dash of passive-aggressive-Seattle-native to taste.
So, on principle, I did what any self-respecting Germanic would do…I scythed ’em.
At 9PM.
In the wind and (threatening) rain.
And damn if it wasn’t fun.
On principle, I pridelessly borrowed BopOp’s European Scythe custom fit for his six foot frame and peened to a razors edge, and silently yet methodically dispatched every last lion while They slept. (At least every last lion I could see by the shine of Their porch lights.) So now those that are paying attention, and I am sure that They are, will wonder in the morning exactly who, how, and WHEN this was done?
They will have all manner of explanations, and not one will guess the truth.
Most anything should be guessed before the methodical hewing of the beasts with such a spectacular implement as that!
But then, I am the new kid on the block, with a yard full of bullies, a Manifesto on Horizontalism to write, and I am importantly a Zimmerman with a strong Erskine streak.
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*They are any number of my neighbors who have proven to be extremely good neighbors. They watch our house while we are away, They bring presents to The Mermaids, inform us of goings-on of which We ought to be aware, and generally succeed at being assiduous, proper, and helpful. I like Them and I appreciate Them. They are also all either retired, semi-retired, fastidious about their property and things, or all of the above. I, at least, am none of that and while We can be semi-fastidious, it is typically in short spurts and just as typically in the way of further playing with The Mermaids. So, TIME is obviously an issue here.
blief 