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.

Feeling sorry about the yard, for once

Normally, I don't care for or much about the yard.

I care enough to mow the grass. But I don't care enough to fertilize, I don't care enough to de-thatch, I don't care enough to water.

Been there, done that, I guess you could say of me. I cared a lot about how green, and how lush and how few dandelions there were in my lawn during a previous life in the suburbs of Boston.

In the suburbs, you and your property values were often judged on looks, so we kept up appearances. Everyone fertilized, everyone mowed on weekends, everyone bagged clippings, everyone raked.

But I don't have neighbors here in rural New Hampshire who judge my lawn. I have trees, and the trees don't judge either.

But it's because of the trees -- and the harshness of the winter -- that I feel genuinely sorry for my lawn this spring, enough so that I will go to some unusual lengths -- at least for me -- to care for it this season.

In general, the winter was tough on the lawn because of the amount of snow that had to be plowed. With only so many places to push the snow, it became necessary to push it more and more and more onto the yard. As the plow's blade push the snow it also dug into the grass along the driveway. As a result I have big scars of dirt where the turf used to be.

The lawn also took a beating from the December Ice Storm and all the branches -- some small, some big -- that came down from all the trees.

The limbs have been gathered and fed into a rented chipper, leaving me with a very large pile of natural mulch (photo above).

But there's lots of more suburban-like maintenance to do. I need to rake away what's left of the Ice Storm tree debris. I need to get some grass seed to fill in the ugly scars. I need to use the mulch in the garden beds that may or may not get planted by my wife this season.

There are times when I want to release my yard back to nature ... just forget about the whole thing, let it assume control over its own destiny rather than have me try to control its will.

But this year the lawn has got me feeling guilty.

So there's work to do. The lawn is too big to fail. Time for a bailout. And I'm the stimulus.