A few weeks ago I was introduced to the term “no mow May.” Apparently by not mowing the lawn in May there is a theory that we allow all of the pollinating insects to do their thing and Gaia will be happier and not allow volcanoes and asteroids to kill us all.
Now everyone on this site knows of my undying allegiance to the Green Revolution. I’ve had the “global warming hockey stick graph tattooed on my eyeballs so that I’m constantly thinking about how much danger the planet is in. So of course, I sacrificed all other considerations and refrained from mowing the lawn.
Well, lawn would be a misnomer. My neighbors despise me for the sheer tonnage of dandelions in my fields. They accuse me of robbing them of the perfect lawns they lust for. I am, in a word, a heretic against the religion of lawn care. But be that as it may I held out all May. And as they drove by my property and the grass and weeds got taller and taller I could feel their hate growing and the dark side of the force becoming stronger and stronger. But I would walk about unconcerned, at play in the fields of the Lord, luxuriating in the waist high sea of grass and weeds, taking macro shots of bugs and the grass itself and whatever else struck my fancy in my fantasy of a post-Leftist Earth.
But yesterday was May 31st and Camera Girl confronted me and reminded me of that fact. And she had that wifely look on that I could tell meant that she would brook no nonsense. And noticing it I said, “Oh, June already, how time flies! Well, thank goodness it’s stopped raining. I’ve been worried I’d never be able to get out there!”
So yesterday I hooked up the ride-on mower to a battery charger and got out my new ear protection and safety glasses and gloves and gathered up the various debris that was scattered all over the property and checked under the exceptionally long grass around places where there could be rabbits, foxes and other varmints hiding and collected all the large rocks, tennis balls and dog toys that Camera Girl hurls around the yard for the canine crew.
And this morning bright and early at 11 am I went outside and began the ordeal. Yikes! No mow May is a tricky calculation. Sure, it bought me a couple of weeks of sloth but what a wreck. I ended up recutting about a third of it and the cleanup was considerable.
Remarkably, Camera Girl was so impressed by the improvement that she seemed to forget that I was the cause of it looking so awful in the first place and I was treated as the conquering hero. At late snack there was a slice of some kind of pastry, sort of like a Danish but less doughy, that I didn’t even know was in the house. It was served with a mug of coffee just the way I like it and all was sweetness and light. Women are extremely unpredictable creatures. They get stirred up about things that we don’t even notice. And we almost never know whether it will be in our favor or not. But as has been observed by greater minds than mine, they are the only source for producing more human beings that we have so far discovered. So, there we are.
There’s a lot to be said for cutting the grass. A man can lose himself for a few hours and he can find his mind wandering in and around a lot of problems that are somewhere in the back of his mind. Alternatively, he can also sometimes forget his problems for a little while. Today was one of those day. I turned off the 2024 election and all the rest of the madness for a few hours and damned if I don’t feel a lot better.