Written by Michael Claxton
I still remember the gardener. I was in Ukraine volunteering at a children’s camp deep in the woods of Kharkiv. It was the camp that time forgot, and the gardener was an old man, stooped and frail.His white hair was uncombed, and his clothes had seen better days. As the sole caretaker for acres and acres of overgrown campground, he seemed perpetually behind. In some places the grass was chest-high, and the bushes were well on their way to becoming trees. I seem to recall that some of the weeds had gotten tattoos and were smoking cigarettes just to taunt him.You see, the poor man was hacking away at this jungle with a sickle. No John Deere dual-hydrostatic zero-turn lawnmower. No Ryobi 18-volt Lithium string trimmer. No Craftsman 4-cycle wheeled edger. No Cyclone Rake Z-10. Just an old man with a blade on a stick. I watched as the ancient worker swung his scythe in hit-or-miss fashion, sometimes cutting down the stalks around him and sometimes not. I sensed that he was both determined to keep working and resigned to fail. I pitied him.Then I bought a house.I now realize that time for me will be forever divided into two halves. First, there were those blissfully ignorant decades Pre-Mortgage, when life was easy and I was innocent. Now time will be measured by everything that happens until my last payment, which may include retirement and committal to the Home. Let’s call the two halves of my life PM and AM. The After-Mortgage Michael has a lovely place to rest his head, yet he is also a humbled man. I’m told people have similar turning points when they get married, or have children, or discover Sudoku.So which one of my naive PM beliefs now seems so quaintly amusing this week? The old Michael felt sorry for any poor chump who couldn’t keep his yard under control, who used outdated equipment, who dared admit himself beaten in spirit by upstart flora. What a sweet kid I was back then.This thought occurred to me last week as I was using a pair of scissors to trim the edges of my lawn. Since I can afford neither a weed- eater nor a goat, I am reduced to this pitiful snipping in order to keep a well-manicured yard. By the time I clipped from one end of the driveway to the other, the weeds at the first end had already sprouted 2 inches. I could have sworn one of them called me a wuss. I could also have sworn that one of the neighbors walked by and blessed my heart.I come by this incompetence honestly. Neither of my parents enjoyed yard-work.Our idea of a green thumb involved eating lime Jell-O with our fingers. Now when it comes to the inside of the house, mind you, I can match vacuuming chops with anyone. I learned from the best. As they say, a speck of dust would die of loneliness in my mother’s house. But outside, I’m as green as they come (in the old sense of the word).That’s why I looked all over White County for a house with a concrete yard. But they don’t make those around here. So instead I’ve got to figure out how to keep my acre from turning into the Amazon Rainforest. I got some help at first from professional landscapers, but they charge per blade of grass that gets cut.And it just so happens that I chose a neighborhood where lawn maintenance is not just a source of pride—it is a way of life. I feel like the poor schlep who moved in next door to the Biltmore Estate. Each house has a built-in sprinkler system and riding lawn- mowers larger than my Toyota. I may even have seen some crop dusters flying overhead.Carports around here are filled not with cars, but with spades, shovels, rakes, shears, trowels, hoses, axes, hedge-clippers, edgers, spreaders, de-thatchers, roto-tillers, leaf blowers, bulb-planters, loppers, trenchers, plows, hand-saws, chain-saws, pitchforks, backhoes, grain scoops, sprayers, aerators, pruners, cultivators, weeders, chippers, split- ters, stump-grinders, augers, mulchers, lawn rollers, wheelbarrows, rain-gauges, soil probes and something called a hori-hori.I, on the other hand, have a pair of scissors and a half-gallon of Round-Up. Let’s hope it’s a long winter.MICHAEL CLAXTON is a guest contributor for the Bison. He may be contacted atmclaxto1@harding.edu
