YARD WORK

My back yard looks great right now. I just spent several hours cleaning up and mowing the verdurous space. By the first of next week it’ll look like crap again. One of the main reasons that the splendid appearance is so fleeting is that my basic crop is weed related. If I had a nice base of Rye grasses or Kentucky Blue Fescues then I might get more mileage out of my mowing and raking and such. But my yard leans to the Crabgrass, Chickweed and Dandelion varieties of flora. They say that one man’s weed is another man’s dinner, but I’m pretty sure that was Ewell Gibbons who said that and he’s dead so I’m not eating any old Dandelion soup.

I’ve been using my brand new Craftsman push mower with the big wheels on the back. It’s a side discharge bagger type or a mulcher, whichever you choose. I choose mulcher. It’s much easier that way and those little sticks you miss when you’re raking get chopped up into sawdust pretty nicely. Plus it’s good for the lawn, or so I’ve heard. Up until last fall I had two working mowers; a self propelled job that worked pretty well most of the time and a cheap little push mower that I used for the tight spots. The self propelled was really nice until the drive mechanism broke. Then it was like pushing my pickup truck around with the emergency brake set. I had that mower fixed a couple of times. The drive mechanism would only break when I hit some unseen immovable object or tried to drag it backwards when it was in a forward gear position. They really should make those things with automatic transmissions. It was a good mower, a gift from our youngest daughter, and I miss it.

But as I was saying, the grass looks pretty good. It doesn’t have any of those fancy diamond pattern mowing marks that some guys put into their thick green lawns. Some of those yards look like the outfields at major league ball parks. The only pattern in my yard is the decreasing circle as I get closer to the cooler holding my Yeungling Amber Lager. But I don’t think of the few beverages that I might consume during the completion of my chores as real “drinking”. It’s more of a hydration thing actually. We all need to stay hydrated, right? When I go on my daily walk I see people, usually those in expensive sneakers and spandex clothes, carrying their little water bottles. They have them at hand even if they’re just taking the kids to the playground. The kids on the playground even have water bottles, so there must be some sort of government advisory out about keeping hydrated. I do my part for hydration and for the brewing industry at the same time.

If we’re still here in this house next year I’m thinking of paving a good part of the lawn. They call that “hardscaping” as opposed to landscaping. Some rocks and a bunch of paving stones, maybe a few bricks can make all the difference in the world. And what takes hours of work with garden tools can be reduced to a few minutes with a garden hose and a broom. The grandkids would like it. They already love to toss rocks out onto the lawn in the higher grass patches where I can easily find them with the lawn mower blade. This way they can toss the rocks and I can say they are helping me to “re-hardscape” the yard. Good news all around.

Well, I’m going over to my brother’s place to look at a toilet resetting job. I’m not going to do the job I’m just going to look at it and maybe talk about it a little. It’s free help that I’m happy to give. I just wish I could get some free help on this yard work stuff because I really do hate it, even if it does have the advantage of being a perfect opportunity for hydration, even in the morning.

Have a fine day.