Silly Sod

It’s not a big lawn.  And it’s only bloody grass for Goodness sake.  One of the hardiest plants known to man.  Grows anywhere.  Everywhere.  Can’t stop the stuff when you don’t want it.  If I wanted green blades on my driveway, I’d be a happy man.  Yet here I am again, embarking on my annual battle to transform our patch of slimy, mossy ground into something resembling a Wimbledon tennis court.

I mowed it for the first time this year today.  Sometimes I astound myself at the recklessness of my own actions.

Now, one might assume that a lawn mower, set at the gentlest level, would delicately slice the tips off the winter growth.  Assume away.  Because someone, over those quiet winter months, had replaced the blades with a ploughshare.  Instead of a subtle trim, the contraption took to gouging out great sods of earth at random intervals and ripping the remaining grass to within a millimetre of its life.

Now, I’m not one to let the current situation distract me from my chosen path.  I am nothing if not intransigent.  The fact that the lawn looked as though it had had a rather unsuccessful scrap with a mechanical digger did not deter me from pressing on.  In fact, it strengthened my resolve.  I knew it could still be saved with my extensive horticultural knowledge and my sympathetic gardening ways.  I brought out my rake.  At least now, after receiving a US Army crew cut, I could see the moss.  And, after all, the grass’s predicament was the moss’s fault. 

I started scratching away.  I raked and clawed as though my life depended on it.  The pile of green matter grew steadily beside me.  I was winning.  I was winning.

As I paused for breath, I heard a distant tapping.  At the window, babe in her arms, T was mouthing something.

I squelched over to the kitchen.  I caught a reflection of a mud-stained scarecrow in the glass.  A rake in his hand.  T stabbed violently at the pane.

Somehow, and don’t ask me how, the slightly overgrown meadow and child’s playground that sat behind our house had been turned into a scale model of the Somme.  Not one ounce of vegetation remained. 

I turned to express my disbelief to T but she had gone. 

And the door seemed stuck. 

And it started to rain.

Comments

[Mrs RW]

Ah, lawns...it's almost enough to make you wax poetic: fertilizer, grubs, core-aeration. Good times.

For cry-sake, man, get a life!! Just pour concrete over the whole thing and call it Scarlett's playground. you can always paint it green if the neighbors complain too loudly.

[Carlton]

Ah, Mrs RW, I can see you have revelled in the joys of mowing too! Although the concrete solution sounds appealing, the masochist in me insists on persisting! c