Jimmy Cracked Lawn and I Don't Care

It's been two weeks.  I really should mow the lawn today.

But I'm not going to.

It's not so long that it can't go another week.  It's not so long that I would lose a pet in the tall grasses.  It's not so long that I wouldn't see a snake or gator before it was too late.

I don't mow on weekdays.  I have precious few hours after I get home from work and/or activities such as theater or Writer's Guild, that I am not going to spend them mowing the yard.

I mow on Saturday mornings.  And if it rains, why, I'll just wait another week.  Rarely, I will mow with the atheists on Sunday morning.

The neighborhood we moved to is a little bit more upscale than where we were before, and many of the people who live around have highly manicured lawns, and well kept plants and flowers. But there are few who mow even less frequently than me, with grass grown fairly high, some sveldt high.  So I figure if hit that middle ground, I am fairly safe from my neighbor's wrath.

We have a good number of shrubs and plants and flowers, that I don't really know what they are or a clue as how to take care of them.  I suppose at some point, I might have to trim them or something.  Fortunately, Alison's father and his wife do know about these things.  so either they will tell me when I need to do something, or better yet, come in and do it when I'm not looking.

My Dad was a yard person, a hangover I think from managing a farm in his younger days.  He never asked for my help, and when I did try (probably my Mother sending me out to do SOMETHING), he would give me little to do, and if I wasn't doing it right, he would just take the job back.  My father is a wonderful man, but not really a great delegater when it came to yard work or household tasks.  I did take over the lawn mowing by late junior high/high school. Like as I do now, we had a push mower.

Mowing isn't all bad.  The routine physical exercise allows me to think, and sometimes to come up with creative ideas.  I came up with the whole recourse of my life towards doing business and accounting as a career while doing yard work.  Okay, that might not be the best example of positive creative thought.

There are some people who get great joy out of yard work, like my father, and Alison's father.  More power to them.  They only time it upsets me is when people of that ilk think that people who DON'T do that are lazy.  Investing in a yard that takes a lot of work to maintain is a choice, not a requirement.  What looks like a necessary chore to some may look like artificially created busy work to someone else.

Okay, let me check the yard again and see if I really have to do it yet.

Nah.  I'll pass.