At Least the Lawn Got Mowed, 2009

Despite all my efforts to get as many seed pods as I could off the lawn back in the Fall/Winter raking season, there were more little saplings than ever this year. It's not an exaggeration to say that I pulled up hundreds of the fucking things. Two solid hours of scan, bend, pluck. I found myself wishing for that yard-searching sling that Rick Moranis set up for himself in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. And I'm positive that I may have only gotten about 70% of them, if I'm lucky. Seriously, do you know how hard it is to find little green things in the middle of an unbroken plot of nothing but other green things?

My favorite finds were the pods that had tried vigilantly to sprout and plant, but hadn't quite gotten there. One was just a desiccated husk with the sprout sadly hanging out the cracked end. Oh, sorry fella.

By the end of it, I was sure I didn't want to mow the lawn after having uprooted an entire forest. But somehow, I did. And I guess that this day will be an annual event for as long as I own the house, seeing as how the other alternative is to walk around in January and pick up seed pods for hours in the freezing cold - presuming it hasn't snowed. At least in the Spring, when only a percentage of the pods that remain have actually sprouted, it's warm and there are fewer items to worry about. And I won't deny that it's kind of satisfying to tug those little bastards and have the root yank out of the soil.

It's just that it's far less satisfying the 223rd time in a row.

D.