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05/23/2004 Entry: "Mowing against all odds"

Today was a bad day to be bound and determined to mow my lawn. On top of being weak from a recovering illness, the weather shot up to 95 degrees, with threat of thunderstorms, and all morning, the phone was ringing with various things. Nate and Jen came over, the get Jen's belated birthday gift. It was a stained glass art piece that Christine had made for her, but during Jen's birthday, it wasn't quite finished. Then we got a call from our movie contact, asking, "Hey, want to go to the premiere of 'Prisoner of Azkaban' today?" So I sent Christine and CR to go see it, even though I REALLY would have liked to have gone. But I had to stay, my lawn was now past knee-height, it was going to rain all this week, except the weekend, which is Balticon. There was only one window of opportunity, and I had to seize it! Then our fiend BJ came over to pick up his hat he left here last weekend. He has been without air conditioning for a month! He looked terrible.

On top of mowing in this horrible heat, with my normal asthma problems, my CD player wasn't working properly, nor could I find the proper headphones, so I had to mow without music. Then I came across three baby birds that had fallen from their nest. I couldn't see where the nest was, so I kept putting them in the crook of the tree I assumed they had fallen from. Whereupon they'd senselessly fall out of the tree again a few minutes later. Finally, they stayed. Now, when I have grass clippings, I use them as mulch, but it's hard to put down mulch when your mulching rake has been stepped on and broken by someone who swears he didn't do it. So I decided to use the hoe, but the head fell off (it was an old hoe), so I had to use my smaller leaf rake, but the screw that held the pole onto the head fell off and the rake part wouldn't stay on. So I had to use the big yard rake, which was really a pain in the ass to use around hedges. It was like using a shovel to eat pudding out of a small bowl. But I managed.

It took me about 6 hours, when you total the times I took to rest, drink water, and wait for BJ to come get his hat. Part of the delay was the grass was so high, I had to empty the bag at least half a dozen times because it was generating so many clippings, mulching would have just left dead clumps of grass everywhere. Keep in mind I also haven't been able to eat properly because I can't chew. So I hadn't eaten all day. Luckily, I found some ice cream and chili in the freezer, but the chili burned my mouth, and contained beans, which I am allergic to (I lack the enzyme to digest certain fibers), and the ice cream contained dairy, which I can't have on an empty stomach. So I had to do half the backyard with horrible stomach cramps, and constant trips to the toilet. You have to understand, at this point, it was the principle of the thing. If I couldn't do it today, I wouldn't be able to do it for 2 more weeks, and by that point, my lawn will have turn brown and died. Already, there are patches of yellow-green in my backyard where the grass got so high, it choked off the sunlight to the ground. But I think I got it in the nick of time, and those patches will spring back to life.

My tomato plants look great, by the way. All of them are surviving vigorously, which is a bit TOO successful, because I was counting on at least half of them dying by now. My garden will be a huge green mound by the end of the year.

Hope my friends like tomatoes.

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