Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.Sometimes it is better not to do that great of a job By J. G. Fabiano My parents always taught me that if I work hard and do my very best at anything I put my mind to success would surely follow. This was sound advice I have been trying to follow for most of my life and I've watched many of my colleagues, friends, students, and even strangers live their lives by working hard and thus succeeding. But, every now and then there comes an instance when doing a great job can be detrimental to one's achievement. Last year my wife advised I look into a landscaping company that specializes in keeping one's lawn looking great. Ok, for the last few years I had more yellow flowers and weeds in my lawn than grass. Now these were the part of my lawn that looked good. Most was empty dried out areas that looked more like cement than lawn. Another reason my wife wanted our yard to look better was my daughter was getting married and she had arranged to have her wedding shower at our house. Since the shower was to take place in the summer she wanted it outside. Needless to say my lawn had to once again look like a lawn. I contacted a company that promised to make my yard look better. They gave me a fair price and once every couple of weeks they would arrive in their shiny white truck and spray my lawn with material I never wanted to know what it was. I should have suspected something when they asked if I had any animals or young children who might wander off and play in the yard. Since I had neither I did not give it a second thought. This company did a fabulous job. Within the first month the field of dandelions and weeds were replaced by a beautiful coat of Kentucky Blue Grass. I was taught that clover was not grass but really a weed and the concept of attempting to pull a weed was as antiquated as buying a goat in order to control its growth. Everything seemed wonderful. By the time the shower occurred my wife was proud to have her family and friends walk on what appeared to be more of a carpet than a lawn. I should have known their was an imminent problem when I discovered one lone dandelion hiding behind a shrub the machine's juices could not find. This particular weed was larger than anything I had seen before. It leaves looked like small blankets and the stem had to lift the yellow flower at least two feet into the air. At first I thought the weed poisons had missed it but then I realized because of some genetic mutation this particular weed was not killed by the substance that killed all its family but literally was nourished by it. The first thing I wanted to do was simply pull it out. But, then a strange thing happened. As I walked near the monster I thought it moved its yellow head. At first I thought I had breathed in a bit too much of the stuff that was blown on my yard but then I moved around the bush and watched it move its head as if it had some means of defending itself. Since I did not want to be this 'Triffids' first victim and thus be a part of the fertilizer that made it what it is I decided a little bit of color around my yard was not a bad thing. To this day every time I pass that particular part of my house I hopefully imagine hearing this newest of lawn ornaments ask me to 'feed it'. I've learned long ago when there is ever a positive there is some negative hiding behind what you thought would always be wonderful. After the shower my lawn continued to progress into being the pride of the neighborhood. There was not a spot in my yard that was not covered with a plush coating of gorgeous lawn. The basic problem was that it grew as long as it did luxurious. This necessitated cutting the lawn more than once a week. In fact, it made me trim what soon became a monster every other day. At first I did not mind the task because I thought it would keep me in shape. In reality all it did was cripple me to the point the art of limping overwhelmed the act of walking. Both my lawnmowers had similar problems. Thinking a tractor could work its way through just about anything, I discovered its two razor sharp 16 inch blades were no match for the monster I created in my yard. My 10-horsepower tractor was no match for the green web that it was supposed to cut. On many occasions it simply stalled out. When I looked under the now helpless machine I noticed the blades were gummed up by a thick syrup-like green substance that must have been the blood of the ogre that was now budding in my yard. After about a dozen tries my hapless tractor stalled one final time and decided it had had enough. It now sits in the corner of my yard completely engulfed by the enemy it was supposed to conquer. I then reverted to my ever-dependable walk behind mower. This machine was powerful if not smaller. I thought it had the capacity to defeat my newest adversary. Once again I was proven wrong. This machine did not simply give up. It literally exploded. As I was rounding the part of my lawn that proved to be the most challenging the spark plug literally exploded out of the machine never to be seen again. As I limped with my crippled machine and placed it next to its now dead tractor I knew I had been defeated by a monster created by a company who did their job a bit too well. My parents always taught me that if I work hard and do my very best at anything I put my mind to success would surely follow. I think I just found the first instance where this adage is not necessarily true. The End.
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