Gardening Weather

[John Chernega]

I could pinpoint the week that Mr. Witters cut down to part time just by looking out the window.  Under his intense maintenance, his front lawn transcended tidy towards immaculate. He hand-trimmed his grass to a consistent inch and three-quarters. His shrubs now resembled topiary, carefully cut into the shape of the perfect shrub.  The flowers along his front walk never died, they just changed shape and color once a week. No amount of mowing, gardening or watering on the part of the rest of us would even make us worthy to stand in the shadow of his groundcover. It had become uber-lawn, the yardstick by which he could stick it to all the other yards on the block.

 

That was three years ago.

 

Then came June, when the temperature achieved a perfect 77.843 degrees and never budged. The sodding temp, they said. At 77.843 weeds wilt, fungus dissolves, grubs undergo some fasting ritual and grass flourishes. Flourishes.

 

The wind, at 8.229 knots NW carried the dead leaves to the river and bent the grass at just the right angle that we got by mowing just twice a month. It rained while we slept. We all caught up to Witters; his yard was everyone’s yard, and we didn’t lift a finger. Suddenly, the grass was greener on both sides of the fence. We achieved Turf World Peace.

 

But something was happening. When the weather does your yardwork, you don’t complain. But when you don’t complain about the weather, you lose something. In rerun season, water-cooler discussions deteriorate into personal attacks on each other’s deeply held religious and political beliefs.

 

Without a landscapegoat, Witters snapped. I don’t know the details. He was fired, put on house arrest. The lawn race became his full time job.

 

I’m installing a ten-foot fence.

[william]

This is beautiful, John.

[markcmarino]

Agreed.  A tale so nicely spun.

Although I'm racking my brain for ways to use it to get me out of lawn mowing at home....

[John Chernega]

Thanks!

[raygonne]

I heard Old Man Witters developed an obsession with the lost Landscapegoat. He's not alone in that, of course. What remains to be seen: Did the Landscapegoat recede into the lawn, or did the lawn cover it up?

JJ

[Jeremy Hight]

 

Then came June, fog that burns away late morning, doldrums , perfect lawns and those left to die or ripped clean away.  The drought has been 5 years now as though 60 months were  just shades of one season, variations of calendar time as the way a tornado sucks the gravity and architecture clean in a house to tinder, time as gradations of heat and

cloud.   

I am a fence.  I have surrounded that one house here for my whole "life" (you humans and your words and names!) and seen the man water away like it would keep bad things away, like it would be new and keep closed the chatty caves of mouths of the neighbors.  He sometimes even held a hose in a rare thundery rain in the last few years, he risked glowing like a fence hit by a bolt to keep it all so neat and tidy.  He sunburned in the hottest times like a marker for the subtle shifts of heat people call seasons.

Death is dirty.  It is the muddy water along my body when he over waters.  It is the excess water that runs silt and filth away down the street to the gutter near me.  It is never clean.  Nothing is.   

[davinheckman]

It was more than just kids in the park.  It was how they were in the park. Eyes glued to their phones, thumbs sliding around, feet leading them on shambling paths that cut across the established walkways, their thoughts in the clouds. How many of them were on medication? How many of them were even kids? They had beards and tattoos and the kind shit you have if you have a house and a garage, like portable canopies and canvas chairs.

He could feel his blood boiling.  He'd run them off. "It's a park," they'd say.  "It's a veterans' memorial! These are like tombstones!" Maybe he'd turn that big canopy over.  But they'd get the picture.  They'd pack up their shit and leave.  Maybe even say they were sorry.

But they didn't.  They just kind of did what they always did.  Focusing on their phones, looking at his torrent of rage from a distance, through the eyes of their device.  Making snide remarks, as if they were talking beyond him.  One kid put his phone down, speaking earnestly, like a telemarketer, "Sir, I have nothing but respect for veterans.  Didn't you fight so that we could be free to do this? To play Pokemon? I would like to shake your hand."

He tried to process, but was quickly overwhelmed by rage. "I don't want to shake your fucking hand.  Get your fuckin' nose ring out of my face."  Fuck it, I'm smashing their tent.  He hopped on the thing, slashing and tearing, pulling apart the flimsy rivets that only barely it thing together. He wished it was made of meat and bone.  That it could scream. But it just kind made a flip flap sound. 

Before he knew it, the police had arrived.  He'd called them.  He said, "I'm gonna run these jackasses off. And you can help me or you can arrest me." But they didn't even arrest him.  They took his name, which he offered freely and escorted him away. Behind, he could hear the kids laughing, "I wish that dude would have punched me. Get these veterans out of here for good."

When we were kids, yeah, we were jackasses, hotrodding around when we could get the keys to a car, he thought. Maybe I went too far.  He'd even done some donuts on the baseball field once.  But then, he was drafted, along with his friends.  He served a tour in Vietnam.  Came back, managed to get a good job in landscaping, though he struggled personally.  A lot them struggled.  But working on the Veterans Memorial helped.  His hands in the earth, placing the bricks. Running his fingers over some of the names.  Planting flowers.  He remembered being ambivalent about the war.  He had a sister who used to argue with him.  The whole country used to argue about it.  But it brought him peace to find a place where even those that disagreed could agree.  It was good to list the names of the dead. Even if they did it for different reasons, it balanced everything out. 

But maybe too much balance is bad. Like this weather. Neither hot nor cold, no thunder, no hail, the air was still without so much as a draft. Everyone had too much time on their hands.  

[Rob Wittig]

Interesting graphic in the New York Times.

"Since Weather Stabilization,
Shootings and Gun Deaths Down 38%
Assaults and Murders with Gardening Tools Up 29%"