Lawn Care and Jesus Christ

Nah, just kidding aboot the Jeebus part. I have an aversion to lawn care. Mainly cuz, well, I don't care. I'd much prefer if I had some sort of ground cover plant thing that did not require me to walk in a pattern with spinning blades mere inches from my tootsies. But this will not come to pass. Back when we first bought the house I was sort of gung-ho about the whole idea of taking care of my lawn. That feeling of pride wore off quickly and even though it's not big by any one's standards, there's enough of it that it does require attention (HEY-OH!).

I grew up in apartments and so I didn't have any experience at all with lawn care. Other people took care of that stuff (or as one landlord did, just paved directly over the grass. Classy). I had seen commercials where suburban type dudes took great interest in their lawns and would defend them against the dreaded onslaught of weeds and/or dandelions with their very lives. There were lotsa dandelions and odd looking leafy formations on my "lawn" out in front of the house. "Hmm, I should go get me some of them there spray things to knock down those weed things," I thought to meself. So I did. Did you know that most of those are engineered for use on weeds showing up on say, concrete driveways and such? Yea, I didn't. Reading is hard.

I used this product (RoundUp I think) on what I determined to be the biggest offenders of the area. I sprayed the fuck outta them. I looked down at the milky-white stuff (ew) on the leaves and felt great about my new-found home ownership and being now by association: a lawn care expert. I went back inside and got myself a beer cuz I fucking deserved it. The next day I went back out to survey my newly weed-free lawn. Oh, it was weed-free alright. It was also grass-free. I had in essence created little crop circles of death. I had a grass holocaust on my hands and I was responsible. "Hmm, that's fucked up," I thought. "I wonder why this powerful herbicide killed everything in its path instead of what I had meant to destroy?" Doesn't it know the difference? Nope. It does not. Oh and all these years later the only thing that will grow in those very same circles of death? Weeds. Big, crab-grassy, pervasive and invasive weeds. Nice.

When we first moved in I had purchased one of the reel push mower dealies. They work fine as long as you keep up with the growth of the stupid grass. I, um, didn't and found out that when grass reaches a certain height, all a reel push mower will do is knock the blades of grass over as it passes harmlessly over them. Well mother fuck. I had a gas-powered weed whacker thing but it's loud and noisy and made my hands hurt. Plus, it would shoot grass juice all over my pretty little sundress. Have you ever tried to mow a lawn with a weed whacker? It ain't fun.

I went out a couple years back and bought myself an honest-to-goodness gas lawnmower offa some dude who had it on Craigslist. He even had a 2-gallon gas tank that he threw in as an extra bonus. I brought it home, stuffed it into the basement (it was almost winter) and forgot about it. Flash-forward a couple of years later and I'm at work complaining to a buddy about having to weed-whack my ghetto lawn again. He asked me about the lawn mower I had bought. Oh, that. Um, I don't know how to use it. Hee. I didn't know, seriously. He somehow didn't kick me in the balls and offered to show me how to use it that Saturday. Deal.

One of the problems with having this lawn mower stashed in the basement is that I don't have a bulkhead access for the basement. The only real way to get the thing into and out of the basement is to lug it up the basement stairs and then drag it across the kitchen floor to the back door. The biggest issue with that is when you happen to have more than half a tank of gas in the mower, it tends to leak out as your dragging it up the stairs. Awesome. So whatever, I learn how to use the mower (much obliged there Andy) and proceeded to use it fairly regularly, spilling gas all over my stairs every goddamn time.

Then I ran out of gas. Now I am a special kind of lazy. I still (I'm talking over a year now) haven't gotten more gas for the mower. Yup. A YEAR. Whatevs. I kinda hated the gas mower anyway for many of the same reasons I hate the gas weed whacker thing. So it has been sitting in a corner of my basement mocking my manhood ever since. Up yours mower, can't you see I'm not manly? Sheesh. I even looked into getting one of those battery powered mowers but they're more money than I was willing to spend. So what to do? I bought myself an electric weed whacker (with the giant 100 foot cord) and I'm out there like a retard weed whacking my whole lawn again. Sigh.

At the beginning of the spring I was out in front of the house dreading another season of lawn care when the kid who lives next door came over. "Hey Mr. O'Malley," he called, as I freaked out realizing that that's actually my name now...so old. "I can mow your lawn for you if you want whenever I mow my mom's lawn." YES! You, sir are a savior. He said he'd do it for $10 and I could just pay him whenever I saw him next. Holy shit. Dude, I'm gonna pay you $20 for your much appreciated service. Now chop chop! Get to mowing!

And for a solid month and a half this was my greatest accomplishment. I had procured a landscaper for super cheap. I remember the first time I pulled into our driveway and looked over at the freshly mowed lawn. Best. $20. Ever. It ruled. Then about 10 days ago, after noticing that my lawn was in need of a trimming I saw the kid. He had a cast on his arm. Oh Fuck You. "Hey there Mike," I called out to him. "Uh, what happened?" He broke his goddamn wrist. 6 weeks in a cast and then 5 weeks of physical therapy. Oh, you dick. That's the whole goddamn summer and right into early fall. WHO'S GONNA MOW MY LAWN FOR ME? YOU EVER THINK OF THAT? Oh, I need to sit down for a minute. Oh you putz. Ugh.

So there it is. Right now my lawn is so overgrown that I'm thinking of calling in the EPA to see if I can get it declared a wildlife preserve or something. I just don't want to fucking walk around trailing a 100 feet of cord getting covered in tiny bits of grass and debris. My Chuck Taylors are supposed to be blue, not streaked with green grass ick. Plus it's been raining here non-stop for going on a month now. This is gonna suck. I'll try to remember to take a picture of the lawn tonight but no promises. My brain is very tiny.