Yard work has been an unexpected bonus of staying home with the kids. And I mean that sincerely. Unlike the drudgery of doing dishes or cleaning toilets, “yard work” is chores you do outdoors. If the weather’s nice and the kids behave, it’s actually pretty satisfying. My Fit Bit thinks I’m “outdoor biking” when I mow the lawn, raking makes me sore enough to believe I’ve been to the gym, and standard yard equipment is loud enough that my kids are basically on mute and can’t pull me into their arguments over who’s cheating at made-up yard games. Inside chores just aren’t the same. My Fit Bit would never confuse washing dishes with anything vaguely aerobic (other than full-body sobbing) and being elbow-deep in a toilet has yet to discourage my kids from demanding my immediate attention.
Despite the many pleasant surprises that come with working in the yard--where the grass is quite literally greener--there's still the occasional dog turd underfoot. So while I'm currently embracing my newfound outdoor to-dos, I've still managed to develop a distaste for the following aspects of my new chores:
1. Blowing leaves: If there were a proficiency test for using a leaf blower, I’d fail miserably. While it’s satisfying to see dirt fly out of cracks in the pavement like you’re Moses parting the Red Sea, me blowing leaves looks a lot like a monkey f’ing a football in the front yard. While the experienced yard crew on the neighbors’ lawn is making it look easy with their gas powered blowers and skills honed through years of back breaking work, I’m tripping over the cord on my electric version and walking into an opposing cloud of leaf bits with my mouth open. When I’m done, any leaves I haven’t accidentally lodged under my car have just been pushed from one part of the lawn to the other. Trails of debris have been sharted across the driveway and strewn conspicuously into the road. After a 1/2 hour or so, there’s mulch in my hair and I’m nearly dragging the blower through the grass from my embarrassing lack of upper body strength.
2. Mean plants: The holly bushes in front of our porch are thick and green, with hard shiny leaves that look great all year. But they also impart stigmata on my hands with the thorny point at the end of each leaf if I even attempt to touch them without gloves so thick I can barely bend my fingers. Meanwhile, the decorative bush hiding the transformer at the edge of the yard has long fronds so skinny and sharp, they will literally cut a bitch. You can only attack it wearing chainmail and a welder’s helmet. The boys are forbidden to retrieve soccer balls that roll into it for fear they might pull back a bloody nub if they dare to reach in.
3. Squirrels: We get so much sun on the back deck, I could probably bake a split chicken breast straight through on the bare wood in the summer. It would be a perfect place for sun-loving plants if it weren’t for the neurotic squad of squirrels that wreck everything they see. I re-planted a petunia my son gave me 5 times before I finally got tired of finding it ripped out of the pot and thrown on the ground when the squirrels decided it wasn’t as delicious as the wooden gazebo they’ve gnawed all to hell or the stuffing from Ray’s grill cover they systematically devoured over the course of one fall. We put a fake owl statue out there to scare them away, but you can almost hear them laughing at it and pointing, like they’d trip it, pull its pants down, and shove it in a locker if it ever had the balls (or physical ability) to move.
4. Pine cones: Our natural area is a great place for the kids to play, with a thick carpet of pine straw and a fair amount of shade. Unfortunately, those tall trees shit pine cones like somebody’s paying them by the ounce. We’ve set up a garbage can for “pine cone basketball”, hoping we could 'Huckleberry Finn' our kids into clearing the debris...but those f’ing pine cones are sharp as shit and I can only listen to “Ow! My finger!” so many times before I want to call child services on myself.
5. Gum balls. Just like pain-in-the-ass pine cones, but smaller and shat from a tree that’s pretty grotesque-looking all year round. If the Grinch was a plant, he’d be a Sweet Gum tree.
6. Garden hoses. Since both our water spigots are in the back yard, importing water to the front involves about 2 miles of nasty green hose. On the left side of the house, it’s wound around a spool that’s about the diameter of the earth’s core once that hideous hose is all wound up. On the right side of the house, the hose is just piled in a heap on some landscaping rocks, like “fuck it” right next to the air conditioning unit. That means every time I drag it out to water the lawn, I've got to lug it back to its resting place when I'm done, while it coils around my body like a dirty, green emaciated boa constrictor. After I threw it in a heap, all pissed off, the last time I used it, it somehow managed to tie itself in a series of impossible knots like it’s hoping to take up sailing and just wanted to practice. I’ll be cursing it like a tangle of Christmas lights the next time the lawn needs watering, but ultimately end up perpetuating the vicious cycle by shoving the hose back into a heap when I'm done.
7. Dead things. This past spring, I had the honor of stumbling across a severed bunny head and a pair of dead bunny bodies on the walkway in the side yard. After promptly shitting my pants, I had to undertake the task of scooping them all up with the snow shovel and depositing them at the curb before my son saw. For a grown-ass woman who typically screams like I'm reenacting the shower scene from Psycho when I try to kill a random wood roach in the house--I'm sure you can imagine what a shit show this was. Especially since, as luck would have it, I'm no more coordinated in wielding a snow shovel than I am a leaf blower. What ensued was a 10-minute ordeal of me pushing bunny carcasses down the walkway as I tried in vain to scoop them up, whisper-yelling "FUCK!!!" to myself every time I accidentally smushed a whole or partial bunny into the pavement when it rolled under (instead of into) my shovel.
So basically, work is still work. Whether it's confined to the house or nestled in the loving arms of nature, there's bound to be one hell of a learning curve. In this case, I'm willing to take the bad with the good in the name of fresh air and free exercise. I won't be winning any awards from the neighborhood homeowners' association any time soon, but I'm at least confident I could start a push mower now if my life ever depended on it. There's still plenty I don't do, like edging, fertilizing. and mulching--and it's a damn good thing. Cuz if my life depended on that, I'd already be dead. And I'd probably take more than a few bunnies with me.
Comments
Post a Comment