I'm really worried that my neighbor's son won't get to follow through on his promise of bringing the riding lawn mower over here tomorrow. We're supposed to wake to rain, and have it most of the day. I regret postponing taking action in the yard a few days ago, when I was kitted out to do it. It would have been a tiring mess, however, rolling the standard lawn mower back and forth over the big patch that was ignored for so many weeks it went to seed. Heat and hip pain and sheer laziness added up to a wild kingdom that must now be addressed. I didn't feel like trudging over to the gas station to refill the gas can today, but I did find the drive to recharge the battery on the weed eater. I went out and took down about eighty percent of the ludicrously long patch, swinging the weed eater in broad strokes like a buzzing, day-glo yellow scythe. It was far easier to make progress that way than with an actual mower. And it was oddly comforting, even as it was exhausting after a while. All those home remodeling shows learned ages ago how much fun demolition is, as did I the first time I ripped out yards of moldy drywall with a claw hammer. The wanton destruction works out all sorts of repressed anger and hostility, and you're left feeling spent and satisfied (yeah, I know what that sounds like.) Today's scythe-swinging was as useful as it was fun. I should be able to run the mower over it tomorrow, even if my would-be hero doesn't show up in the morning. He did spend most of the day cutting back the years-overgrown pampas grass from his grandmother's front lawn (she's the one who owns the house). The grass in this patch in my yard had gotten so long, it was tipped over from the amount of seeds on the stalks. It reminded me of an autumn day decades ago when my mother and I walked the path to our horse barn in Oklahoma, and the sun hit grass that looked just like this. She told me she loved the color combination in it, the sage green, the ecru of the seeds, and the heather pink along the chaff. It was easier to love that patch of grass at the barn. Nobody ever had to mow it. This evening, my wild destruction of grasshopper habitat had me stopping to check whether it had begun to rain -- because big, fat, opaque drops kept flying past my peripheral vision. Poor terrified bugs.
I used to be a news junkie. For years and years, I would have the television on all day on 24-hour cable news channels (back before it was entirely hijacked by infotainment and punditry). At work, I would frequently sneak computer time to look at the news online (before those were permanently infected with paid ads masquerading as news articles and spam masquerading as pop culture). Now I barely know what's going on around the world, compared to how informed I felt then. I blame the poor quality of news sources now as much as I blame how horrible the news is. I can't believe how bad is the news that has pierced my bubble in the last few weeks. There are times I feel guilty for stubbornly refusing to turn this space into serious commentary on world events, for instead clinging to my light-hearted stories of cats and plants and embarrassing moments from my youth. Then I look at how awful it is out there, and I decide I want no part of it. I'm staying behind my walls, inside my fences, where I control the stories. The world is going to hell, but it's not going to take me with it.
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