Area Closed for Permitted Activities

I mowed the lawn, not for the first time this season, but at least for the first real time this year. The first time, I only did a quick and dirty Potemkin mowing, just the front yard and no trimming. This time I did my best on the front yard, but it still looks like a bicyclist’s yard. A bicyclist’s yard always shows neglect, because the bicyclist would rather go riding than gardening. The two activities compete against each other for the cyclist’s time. Consequently, the appearance of his yard suffers.

Tonight, my neighbor across the street was paying off her gardener who has planted her a new front lawn. It looks great, as beautiful as a monoculture can be. Her professional gardener gave me a rather predatory look, as he was walking away and I was still struggling with my mower. I don’t think that such lawns were what Walt Whitman had in mind, when he wrote “Leaves of Grass”, still they are considered the suburban ideal. My neighbor is fortunate, because she is west of me. My crop of dandelions will have a hard time spreading their seed across the street against the prevailing winds, but with all the herbicides that that lawn has on it, she is probably immune anyway. My next door neighbors are not so fortunate.

The backyard was a jungle. Anne prevails upon me to spare the Spring Beauties, when they are in bloom in early spring. I just thought that she would tell me, when it was OK to mow. I guess that she did though, when tonight she commented about how high the grass was back there. I mowed the back forty and did about half the trimming, before the mosquitoes began to descend. The sign with this post is from the front lawn of the Whitehouse, the Ellipse, “Get off my lawn!” Per this year’s Whitehouse Correspondents dinner Obama standup, maybe John McCain is the new groundskeeper?