Monday, August 21, 2006

A Man and His Lawn

I have a confession to make...

I love doing yard work...

I love mowing my lawn... love it, love it, love it...

I always have. I developed my love and talent of maintaining a perfect lawn under the tutelage of my Dad.

That’s one of the reasons I have (one of) the nicest lawn on the block…

Does that make me a freak?

Before you answer, let me tell you this little story and then you can make up your mind.

Saturday, with The Peanut Butter having a broken arm, we were limited in what we could do (no water park, no splash pad, no park)

So since we had a battle-plan for late afternoon (after they took their nap) I decided to mow the lawn.

Not just mow the grass mind you – this was going to be lawn maintenance to the extreme… mow, edge, trim, prune, rake, water, – the whole nine yards.

This is where the freaky part of the story comes in... I enjoyed it and had a lot of fun doing it.

I plugged in my iPod, started my ‘Lawn’ playlist (yes, I have a lawn playlist) and went to work.

I trimmed.

I edged.

I pruned.

I mowed.

I raked.

I blew (the excess grass and such, get your minds out of the gutter people)

I watered.

And then, four and a half hours later, I was done... and the lawn was perfect. (I had a picture, but Blogger bites it and isn’t letting me put it up... the bastards…)

The girls were playing and Honey Mustard was doing laundry and some reading for her next two Master’s classes.

So I made myself a Shandy, opened our patio umbrella... and sat back and had a rush of pride and accomplishment sweep over me as I marveled at my work...

And then something hit me… I was taking pleasure in seeing the finished lawn... some serious pleasure...

Why?

Because there’s something about a finished lawn... no long grass… no grass creeping over the sidewalk… no excess weeds in the garden...

Just a perfect backyard on a (relatively) cool Saturday afternoon.

And then something else hit me... I enjoyed doing the yard work…

I really, really enjoyed doing the yard work...

I am a freak... aren’t I?