Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.Beware the terror that lurks beneath the soggy lawn by J. G. Fabiano Here the grass demands constant attention. First, grass is green. I mean intensely, vividly green. There is no escaping its greenness. Not only that, grass is everywhere; you see it in fields and gardens and pushing up through cracks in the sidewalk pavement. If this were Ireland there would be poems about the green, green grass of home but, it isn’t: this is Maine. Every time I look out my kitchen window I can’t believe how thick and high my lawn has become. I assume it has something to do with the seven straight days of rain we just suffered through but I still can’t believe how something as small as a blade of grass could grow so fast. Of course it might have something to do with the bags of fertilizer I dumped on it early in the spring. Back then I was so sick of winter I desperately needed something green to look at. Now all I could see was green and it was time to get out there and whip it into shape. The first thing I did was roll out my hand mower so I could cut the swale around my property before I jumped on my lawn tractor to complete the rest of the task. Yellow dandelions also covered the swale even though the grass around them was lush and virgin pure. These evil plants were not only ugly but they multiplied before your very eyes. Pushing my lawn mower through this field of yellow invaders I noticed that when I rolled over them they seemed to duck their heads to save themselves from being decapitated. Looking around I watched them pop up again behind me, mocking my attempt to cut them down. Pushing my way through the swale I noticed something else. Because of all the rain, it was filled with water and mud. This was actually a good thing, because it was doing what it was supposed to do but, I was also doing what I was supposed to do, and every now and then my lawn mower would sink into the mud and stall. My lawn mower was not all that sank. If I stopped moving, I could feel myself grow shorter as I sank into the mud. After pulling my lawn mower out of its new-made hole, I tried to start it up again and learned something important. I learned that after one pulls one’s lawnmower out of the mud, one should find a dry area in order to start it back up. I learned this because, when I attempted to start the mower while it was still mired in the muck, this same muck became attached to my arms, legs, and face until I resembled the creature from the black lagoon. A couple of hours later I pushed my waterlogged mower into the garage where, in a few hours, the mud from the swale would dry to the consistency of concrete but, this would be a problem I’d have to face next week. It was now time to roll out my tractor in order to finish the job. I had confidence in my tractor because of its wide tires and the mighty amount of horsepower it possessed. I thought the worst of my task was over and I would be able to glide through the rest of my lawn with little trouble. Once again I was wrong. The first few passes over my lawn were easy. After the battle of the swale I was actually enjoying it. Then I hit the first really wet patch. Sploosh !! The flooded rice field that used to be my lawn stopped the mighty team of horses inside my lawn tractor in their tracks. The tractor not only stopped, it too started to sink into the muck. I attempted to restart it only to hear a loud whine because the blades had become embedded I the muck. Again and again I tried to turn the engine over only to discover that the slow turning of the blade acted like a kind of screw that drove the machine deeper into the flooded lawn. After about 10 minutes I climbed off the tractor and attempted to push it out of its newly excavated mud hole. I might as well have tried to move my house off its foundation. Not only did the tractor not move, it continued to sink deeper into the mud. It sank so far down I began to wonder if I might lose it altogether in mud that had the sucking capacity of African quicksand. Would some future archaeologist find the tractor a couple of thousand years from now and wonder it was an artefact of a long lost civilization brought down by its fixation with lawn care? I then went to the garage, started up my truck and backed it over to where my tractor was still sinking. How hard could it be to pull a simple lawn tractor out of the mud with a four-wheel-drive truck? I thought. Then I noticed the wheels of the truck starting to sink into the same mud. For a moment this concerned me but then I laughed the laugh of a man who scoffs at danger because I knew my truck was powerful enough to conquer any mere garden mud hole. Once again I was wrong. It took a few minutes to tie a line from the back of the truck to the tractor, now deeply embedded in the mud. After digging a hole with my hands I connected the line to what I thought was the frame of the tractor. I then jumped into the truck, gunned the engine and ripped the engine casing right off my tractor. I got out of the truck and watched the mud as it started to ooze into the newly uncovered tractor engine. Now I was mad. I re-attached the line to the tractor frame, jumped back in the truck, put it in gear, gunned the powerful engine ... and went nowhere. All I heard was the high-toned screeching of tires digging themselves deeper into my lawn. Shocked that my truck was also trapped in the mud I switched into four-wheel drive, pressed down hard on the accelerator again and heard the rear wheels join in the chorus of screaming from the front wheels. My God, I thought. Was I also going to lose my truck? At that moment my neighbor, who had been enjoying the show from the safety of his driveway, came over with his truck and a long chain. He kept his truck on the hard surface of the driveway, attached my truck to his and pulled both my truck and my tractor out of what I though was to be their final resting place. I thanked my neighbor for his help and watched him drive away, no doubt laughing hysterically at what he had just witnessed, then turned to look at my lawn, which was no longer green but scarred with deep ruts and mud holes. It reminded me of one of those photographs of a battlefield from the First World War. I realized I had not cut my lawn but had literally destroyed it. Upon closer inspection, however I saw that not everything had been destroyed. The cheerful, yellow-headed dandelions were waving brightly in the wind.
THE END
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