Friday, July 20, 2012
It’s a jungle out there
One thing I’m not -- in my later years -- is someone who’s going to devote a lot of time and treasure to his yard.
If God wanted me to have a lush green lawn with trimmed and manicured bushes, then God would have made me rich enough to afford a landscaper.
I just can’t be bothered. My new profession as working retired affords other, more interesting uses of my time and treasure.
I was bothered once, back in the days of living in suburbia. It was an unwritten rule in the neighborhood that you had to have a nice yard. It meant that you were living the American dream in your three-bedroom house with two-and-and-half baths and two children.
You kept the lawn mowed. You kept it free of weeds. You watered. You fertilized. You aerated. You whacked weeds and raked up clippings. You sculpted hedges.
Saturday mornings sounded like the start of a car race with the announcement, “Gentlemen, start your engines.” Lawnmowers through the neighborhood came to life with a tug of a cord or the turn of a key or the push of a button.
That was then. This is now. I live in a rural jungle.
I’m flabbergasted that as dry as it is, as dry as it has been since through the winter, that the jungle growth is as prevalent as it is.
I will concede to regular mowings of a large lawn, made easier with a ride-on mower. And I’ll occasionally weed whack. And less frequently I’ll trim a bush. But that’s it; the yard is pretty much left to its own devices.
What I must maintain, however, is a regular schedule of trimming back the jungle growth that creeps unabated along the edges of our long, stone and dirt driveway.
I often see myself as Prince Charming in that scene from the Disney movie “Sleeping Beauty” when he is hacking with his mighty sword through the burgeoning thorny vines in order to get to his lady love.
Hell, I just want to be able to get our cars down the driveway.
As I hack and sweat and curse I’m given to thoughts of how best to solve the problem of underbrush and strangling vines and scrub trees that thrive in the heat and humidity. I’ve been tempted to look on Craigslist to see if the U.S. Department of Defense is selling any surplus Napalm defoliant leftover from the Vietnam War.
I do remember fondly that the bucolic setting in the suburbs didn’t have jungles in need of defoliant.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my rural location. It’s just that we can’t leave the house for any extended period of time during the summer because the jungle will have reclaimed it by the time we get back.
Labels:
Baby Boomers,
lawn care,
yard work
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