Turf Wars. A BakerMuse True Story.

Sure, there may be Biblical scholars that disagree with me, but I believe that on the sixth day, God made yard work.

I quote: "And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground--everything that has the breath of life in it--I give every green plant for food." And it was so."

Aside from that pesky Apple incident, Adam probably spent most of his time plucking away at weeds and finding flocks of willing sheep to nibble down the Eden estate.

Mowing the lawn is a grand lesson in civics. If your yard begins to look like it's been managed by the ladies of Grey Gardens, then you are a neighborhood pariah.  You can commit major felonies in private, but a lawn, like Clark Griswald's holiday lights, is community property.  It's like Freud's big green couch. 

Back when I was a respectable citizen, I owned a house in California. Fortunately, my lawn was the size of a golf divot. All I needed was a pair of pinking sheers and free minute and my mowing duties were done.  But I spent the last 15 years in Condos where a phalanx of mower-people were dispatched to my house when the lawn grew a millimenter. 

Now I'm renting a Victorian Home that has a yard of epic proportions.  It's like Ireland with weeds.  Worse, its on "Main Street" which means it's continually on display.  Now, I actually like mowing. It's me against a rising tide of angry chlorophyll. I joyfully decapitate weeds and grass of all stripes.  My problem is the bag attached to the mower.  Here's the scenario. I mow 25 feet.  Shut off the engine.  Empty bag of Soylent Green.  Restart engine. Repeat, until insanely aggravated.

To toss some major weedage into the wound, the two dogs next door watch my ordeal. Color me paranoid, by I think they are like the infamous Muttley. (See movie below.) Well, I survived all this and dragged two trash cans of trimmings to the curb and into the capable hands of a waste management team.

They don't take clippings.  

They will take vats of nuclear waste water, coffee cans filled with bacon grease, small mouth bass entrails, and Richard Simmons Sweating to the Oldies VHS tapes, but not the green fruit of dear Mother Earth.  I hatched a plan to stuff the trimmings into legal boxes or into empty cartons of Sugar Smacks but that would require the help of relatives and friends.

I tried to remove the plastic guard that would allow the mower to spit out the mutilated grass on its brethren, but it was welded tight. I had a choice. Major hernia or a better scheme to hide the clippings somewhere on the outskirts of town.

My conscience wouldn't allow me to orphan my clippings, so I dragged them to the municipal dump.

They don't take clippings either.  King Richard III famously barked: "My Kingdom for a Horse." I just say, "my surburban home for grass removal."

So, if on your morning constitutional, you see two laughing dogs and a car filled with Soylant green don't be alarmed.  It's me, the  Flying Dutchman of lawns.

Thanks Adam.  Next time, leave that darn apple alone.