My chores used to include mowing the lawn. I liked it best when the lawn was shaggy. I could see I was making a difference. I feel the same way about haircuts. Living with expanding mushroom cloud of salt and pepper locks in the interim is the hard part. I don't know what I'll do when I hit old age and the old head fur starts thinning, but shaving looks more attractive. That and skull caps.
Back in Chicago, our condo had lots of living space but just a concrete alley in place of a lawn, or any greenery, really. A couple summers in, I bought planter boxes and hung them off the fence along the rear concrete walkway, planting flowers and vegetables. The squirrels got most of the produce, I think just out of spite.
How else do you explain the number of peppers with one rodent nibble dropped on the ground? How many times does it take a squirrel to realize, "I don't like the bright growing thing. Eat it/not eat it?" before the squirrel chooses the latter. Forever, apparently.
In college, I blazed and maintained trails, built bridges and not coincidentally contracted a severe case of poison ivy on my legs. Lesson? Always wear pants, even when the heat makes you sweat an impression of moisture shorts.
Our fearless leader, Ken Havens, led the gang with humor and an uncanny sense of good scavenging. At some point we went from hauling gravel with a four-wheeler to loading up a heavy duty Ford truck and trailer. Ken got a lot of equipment retired--like him--from the Miami University office of facilities management. He was thoughtful, slow to speak, loved swimming and doughnuts and struggled with carpal tunnel.
A gentleman on campus once quipped to Ken that he would have loved to buy one of the bat-winged mowers they used to turn what had once been farmland into a luxurious, tamed Kentucky bluegrass lawn. Ken thought the gentleman was hoping to buy one at Sears and didn't want to break it to him that the mower cost forty thousand dollars.
New York City uses mowers not unlike the University's, only here in Sheep Meadow, like so much in the city, they are dwarfed by a grander plan.
I wonder if there is a grander plan for me, and if some piece of it might call for lying in this great green bed. I certainly hope whatever mower life is using to cut me down doesn't let me get too shaggy before I can.
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