Picture Day Part 8: Lawn Goes On

Posted on April 28, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi

Every once in a while I note that I have a fairly big lawn. Here’s some perspective on that:

The lawn goes out to the telephone poles you see there in the distance. I’m at one end, and from where I’m standing it’s about 500 feet to the nearest of the poles. Bear in mind that this is only the front yard; there’s the back yard too (and a side yard). There’s also the matter that this isn’t the full front yard — there’s a fairly substantial strip of land to the left that you’re not seeing. It’s a big yard.

The reason you shouldn’t construe this as bragging is because all that lawn is a real pain in the ass to mow — it literally takes several days, unless you want to spend an entire day vibrating up and down on a tractor. Which is not a really great idea.

We got a lot of land because of some boneheaded idea I had that what I really needed was a chunk of earth, that whole “You’re not a man unless you have some land” thing that caused America’s European forebears to schlep over the ocean and mug the people who were already here. Now I have a bit of land and I wish I had someone else to mow it. Well, to be entirely honest, I do — Krissy does most of the mowing. But I bet she wishes she had someone to else to mow it.

Too late now. We’re here, we’ve got the yard, we gotta mow. With land comes responsibilities. Let that be a lesson for you.