Tales from the Lawn Part Deux

So I think that after this post I should have "had my say", one of my mother's favorite sayings, in regards to my lawn care. One of the strangely bizarre things that happens to me while I am doing yard work is I always manage to attract some of the weirdest people into my space. It is like my presence in my lawn becomes some sort of homing beacon, or powerful magnetic force that pulls people to me. Part of it at first I know had to do with the fact that for a long time I was using some unorthodox means of lawn care (i.e. using and old fashion push lawn mower or weed whacking my entire lawn). Most of the time people would comment that it has been a long time since they had seem one of those, referring to my pust mower. One time when I was still renting, a man had observed me using my push mower and simply "could not take it any more", and came over with his gas mower and mowed my lawn for me. At the time I was willing to let him because I was seconds away from what felt like death by heat stroke. However, as this became a common theme, I evetually got annoyed with the constant comments or offers to mow my lawn for me. My standard response became, "No thank you I like the exercise", as I gasped for air. The part that gets me is that I have seen other people in my own neighborhood with the exact same pust mower as me and I have often wondered if they experienced the same commentary that I did while mowing their lawn.

Since my partner and I bought our current house I have experienced something entirely new when it comes to mowing my lawn. I have acquired an audience. There is a young boy who lives down the street from me, whose name is Michael, and he is utterly fascinated with lawn care. When Michael hears my lawn mower he is like a moth to a flame, he comes quickly over to my house where he proceeds to literally follow me around up and down the yard as I mow the lawn. Now I believe that Michael is a really sweet boy who has been nothing but completely nice to me, but this kind of drives my crazy. And to top it off his tutor/babysitter has recently joined him, though she is obviously not as interested in watching me struggle to push my lawn mower all over the yard. This became evident today while I was mowing the lawn and she brought a plate of food over with her to keep her occupied while I proceeded to put on my show of "girl mowing lawn". Even though she does not share in Michael's fascination she still manages to keep her attetion on me and my every move. There is really no way that I can see out of this since I believe it would break Michael's heart not to be able to partake in this ritual. However, this does add to the drama surrounding mowing the lawn as I explained a few days ago because any time that something goes wrong, which is usually the case, Michael is right there asking why the mower stopped working, how was I going to fix it, and just about every other question possible regarding the situation. This is especially hard because at those moments I want to scream terrible obscenities at the lawn mower which is not really the thing I want a child audience for.

So as I read over this post I am realizing that by simply acknowleging the dramas that I encounter each time that I mow the lawn, it seems like they no longer have the same feel to them . Somehow through this process I have dissipated my anxiety about something going wrong everytime I mow the lawn. I have also come to the realization that even though Michael drives me crazy I am unwilling to take something away from him, like watching me mow my lawn, because I can see that somewhere it fulfills a much larger purpose for him than simply annoying me. So I guess the struggle of mowing my lawn is something I am learning to let go of, which I must say feels kind of nice.