It Takes a Village

Rather it took a village to get my lawn mowed.

For years GG mowed and edged and made a pile of weeds look like a million bucks.

But this past week, and for more to come I'm sure, it fell to me to fire up the electric lawn mower.

And with my newfound respect for not overdoing things I waited just a little too long.

By the time I hauled the mower up the basement steps, figured how to plug into it, wrap the long cord around the porch railing and turned it on I was already overwhelmed.

Imagine my horror when I realized the little engine was no match for the tufts of steel grass.

When the mulch guard, or whatever you call that piece on the side, blew off and I was engulfed in clouds of tick grass, I gave it up and put it back in the basement.

I decided to borrow my neighbor Sheila's mower. She swallowed her bite of dinner and went off to unlock her shed. She brought over the mower, showed me how to get it started, and demonstrated the art of holding it at an angle so I could cut the tall grass down a layer at a time.

Which would have worked fine if I could keep it running, or barring that have the shoulder strength to give the cord a good pull and restart it whenever it sputtered. But my shoulder just wasn't that into it.

Sheila had to bring her father his dinner so drove off promising me she would help when she came back.

She's a single parent, primary caretaker of a very sick man and works full time. I  felt my yard didn't need to be added to her to do list.

Then I strolled across the street to Carlo's house and after banging on the door for a bit managed to rouse a man who was 4 pages from the end of his book and throw himself on his mercy.

He hadn't realized GG was gone and once he heard the story he threw on his Superman cape and flew on over to help.

It must have been difficult to get the job done what with kittens running about and me thanking him with every other breath I took.

He mowed, I raked and nobody edged.

My instructions are simple: mow it every week and it will never be this bad again.

Already I look forward to the heat of the summer when nothing grows. Well the grass stops growing, we'll always have Paris weeds.

And oh my God, it already needs to be cut again. And it hasn't even been a week.

But you already knew that didn't you?