Published: July 17, 2008 04:20 pm            

Weeding out the case: The argument for and against lawn maintenance

It hurts to write this column. To tell you the truth, it hurts to do almost anything today. The reason is one common to homeowners at this time of year: yard work.

The bushes, shrubs and weeds in and around Athens have gone into their annual growth frenzy. Spurred on by rain last week and abundant sunshine lately, and having completed the flower-bearing part of their growth cycle, the green co-inhabitants of my little piece of the planet have sprung almost overnight into overgrown monsters.

Sallying forth with pruning clippers, shovels and the trusty lawn mower, I did battle with my 0.22 acres of yard Wednesday. This morning, the muscles in my back, right calf and arms gave me feedback that, once again, the yard has won.

The weeds are now pulled out of the row of raspberries, the grass is neatly cut and some dirt has been shoveled away from where it doesn’t belong.

I was on a mission. In the newsroom, they joke about me working on my “days off.” I split mine Wednesday between interviewing someone for a feature story and trying to get out into my own yard, to maximize the working time available before dusk. For the next six weeks, there won’t be that many days off.

The Daily Telegraph has this special section that comes out each September. (You know, that huge newspaper delivered one Sunday per year?) Everybody chips in and writes stories. There are at least 67 planned for the 2008 edition, called “Movers and Shapers.” And beginning in 10 days, Virginia high schools start football practice. That means busy days and nights while we keep up with Appalachian League baseball, the start of other prep and college sports, plus features and football previews from both Virginias.

• • •

All this leads me to ask, why engage in lawn maintenance anyway?

• The weeds will grow back.

• Most of the neighbors still have weeds in their gutters, so mine don’t look out of place.

• Plants transpire oxygen into the air and absorb carbon dioxide. The more green stuff there is, the better our air will be.

• The tax bill from the courthouse came in on Wednesday, regardless of whether the ground looks like Astroturf or a farmer’s meadow.

• The cost to run a gasoline-powered lawn mower is four times more than when I bought my plot of land.

• The dog wants you to walk him instead of that noisy “robot dog” that you push around the yard for no apparent (to a dog) reason.

• It’s not easy finding someone you could hire to do the work for you, if you have enough money left over after paying for gasoline, taxes and property insurance to hire someone.

• Once you trim one side of a bush, like the side that faces the sidewalk, you’ve got to keep going or it’ll just look silly.

• When the branches are down on the lawn, they still have to be carried up the hill to their temporary resting place before the town crew picks up lawn debris once a month.

• Time spent working in the evening equals less time to cook supper.

• Time spent stretching to loosen up your muscles properly equals less time to do other things.

• As a direct consequence of that, you skip the warm-ups and play with the pain the next day.

• And how’s this for irony: I took a chunk out of my Wednesday to talk about a proposed beautification project for a vacant lot in Athens, not heeding the admonition in the Good Book to deal with your own circumstances before taking on everybody else’s.

• • •

The counter argument for taking care of the property goes something like this.

• You get a feeling of satisfaction, looking at a neat lawn the next morning.

• You imagine the neighbors are grateful for not having to walk off the sidewalk, out into Old Hinton Road, to avoid the branches of your monstrous bushes.

• And as I’ve written before, this is Athens. A neat town is a nice town. (By the way, some residents of this nice town have been hampered lately in their yard work efforts by having their out-buildings broken into and items stolen, according to town officials. Residents should keep on the lookout for these not-nice people.)

• I think there’s a town ordinance about keeping your grass cut down or they’ll have someone do it for you and bill you.

• ••

The points above are, mostly, offered tongue-in-cheek. That means, they’re not to be taken that seriously. This disclaimer, I felt, might be necessary.

A fellow cartoonist got himself into a controversy this week for drawing a cover illustration for The New Yorker magazine that showed Barack and Michelle Obama as, respectively, a Muslim and a gun-toting ’60s revolutionary. They are neither.

The cartoonist was making fun of the inaccurate rumors being spread about the presidential candidate and his wife. I knew that. I also knew the reputation of the magazine for putting satirical images on its cover. Unfortunately, many partisans in the Obama campaign, and a portion of the American public that is undetermined in size, did not.

If it had been me drawing that cover, I probably would’ve depicted some guy asleep in his bed dreaming about these images, so it’d be clear that they weren’t the opinion of the artist or the magazine. But it’s too late now.

In an election year in which we have to deal with two wars, inflation, instability of national financial institutions and break-ins of our out-buildings, I hope we can get past discussing the intent of a magazine cover.

Writing disclaimers about people you don’t even know hurts. It’s time to go take an aspirin.

Tom Bone is a Daily Telegraph columnist, sports writer and editorial cartoonist. Contact him at tbone@bdtonline.com.

        

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