I've not been posting much lately, I know. Some of this is to do with the lawn thing. I was out yesterday hacking at the tall grass in the corner of the yard with some sort of a gardening implement or other, and while it was satisfying in a barbaric fashion (grass, misfortunately, though, does not have women from whom to hear cries and lamentations), now I have a blister right on the tip of my right index finger. And that makes typing kind of painful. Fortunately, we keep whiskey in the house for just such contingencies.
The post about mowing attracted quite a few comments. For the record, we do have a large garden, and we have planted a lot of trees, and that does eat up a big chunk of yard space. Tree planting is a less optimal solution than it seems, however; trees when first planted tend, on the whole, to be quite juveniles, and as a consequence are rather small. In the short and medium term this does me no good, therefore. Indeed, the new-planted trees are more likely to benefit my children than myself, which is, of course, irritating. Purchasing a scythe intrigues me, but, like I said, we already have a lot of old farming equipment lying around (we have, indeed, a John Deere tractor from I think 1939 in the garage, for reasons I don't even want to get into. We are, BTW, rural, not suburban, if that clarifies things).
As for having the children do it, the 9-Year-Old can't be trusted with anything sharp and deadly within many, many miles of his younger siblings. ("Your son... has the cold, dead eyes of a killer.") Asking the step-19-Year-Old to do any sort of outside chores... that would be like asking a Samuel Beckett character for help moving your couch. So I'm just, you know, no doing that.
And no, I'm not getting any fucking goats or any fucking sheep. That would replace the problem of the lawn with the problem of having to put up with goats or sheep. And at least grass doesn't shit all over the place (I know, it's fertilizer, but also, to a toddler, it's Outside Ice Cream). The next logical step would be, of course, wolves, and then after that, what, Sarah Palin in an airplane? This way lies madness! (We do have chickens, and their area takes up some room, which is good. But truth be told, I dislike the frickin' chickens. Detestable, if delectable beasties.)
I'm tempted to just let it all go, but the town will come by and ticket us (we're not quite that rural).
An electric mower is tempting, but probably impractical, given the layout of the property.
I'm probably going to break down and get a cheap gas mower to replace the one that's fallen apart. (Just noticed today that one of the kids managed to unscrew the gas cap on that one, and then lost it.) But for now, I'll just hack hack hack away. I'm not buying anything until I get my check for the book MS I delivered in goddamn February, anyhow. Why there are no studies on the impact of late payments from publishers on the home gardening industry, I just have no idea.