Lawn Memories
It’s time to mow the tall grass on the back lots. In fact, I should have mowed it sooner, before it went to seed. Now it’s tall and brown, perfect fodder for fire. I need to knock it down, so that rain when it comes can help it begin to decompose and make its way back into the earth. And I want to expose the Bluebonnet seeds for next season. But mowing the tall grass is hot dusty work on a zero-turn mower. A tractor with a seat high above the fray would be better.
Goats would be even nicer, but I don’t run livestock and I suspect I couldn’t afford a herd of goats no matter how clean they’d leave things. So, it will be me and the mower, and maybe I’ll do it later this week. It feels like good August work, and August will soon be here. I’m about halfway through digging up a patch of sticker burrs I want to remove. Talk about tedious, and it’s even painful on occasion. It’s work for thick jeans, leather gloves, and a mind set to neutral.
The question, I suppose, is why do it, and I don’t really have a good answer. I could keep quiet and keep mowing and they’d keep growing. But children and friends occasionally walk on that grass, and I guess I feel as though I owe them a pain free journey. And I’d rather have them take home good memories than a burr in a shoe for latter discovery. And the suburban dad in me has memories of lawns and none of them would have sticker burrs. So, it’s just something I do. It’s a harmless passion as passions go.