Operation Lawn Freedom

A very loose, beer inspired lawn care parable.

Last Saturday I marched outside to do my usual weekend battle with the forces of crabgrass, dandelions , and this late in the active lawn care season fascist juniper looking for lebensraum outside its traditional homeland inside the decorative landscaping island on the far side of the front yard. Persistent issues with the juniper over the last few years forced me to adopt the policy of unconditional surrender for the glorified weed and with limb shears in hand I took on the attitude of Patton cutting into the heart of Deutschland during the Second World War. I cleaned out the landscape island during the early hours of Saturday morning with the company of Daniel Shorr and Scott Simon discussing the events of the past week. After listening to those two guys talk about Bush and his “leadership style” for the last few years I’ve come to the conclusion that they must laugh their asses off as soon as they go off the air right after they discuss some new Bush inspired policy or the latest Bush speech. Well, to be honest they probably don’t laugh, they may cry, suffer fits of anxiety, drink heavily, or pray to God for deliverance for them and the country but I doubt they laugh about anything Bush says or does. But anyway, whatever they do off the air their consistent journalistic professionalism was valuable company as I joyfully ripped through the juniper taking out my frustrations thinking about Rush, Sean, Bill, and the blond haired, short skirt wearing Gila monster that somehow finds a way to crawl from a rock from time to time.

I finished ripping out the juniper in record time, and for some reason felt really good afterward, go figure. But my mission of defeating the forces of juniper fascism and their weed insurgent allies was far from over. Dragonwife returned from a Home Depot trip bringing fresh supplies of weed block cloth, pins to secure the cloth to the newly conquered territory, and fourteen bales of occupying pine straw forces. Before her departure she tried to rumsfeld me by saying she would buy the cheap tissue paper-like brand of weed block cloth at Lowes and questioning my need for more than ten bales of pine straw. And to think she said earlier that week she would go with whatever my recommendations were on how to accomplish the mission Saturday morning. Must be something in the water or air since others, admittedly on higher levels, do their best to ignore the more knowledgeable advice from those in the field or front yard. But I did not bow to Dragonwife’s pressure to underestimate what it would take defeat the forces of flora fascism. Hell no, I would not betray-us the mission by allowing insurgent weeds to hide out underneath the cheap weed block only to poke through and endanger the new regime I established in the landscaping island.

After taking command of the new supplies I surged forward and laid down the thick quality weed block cloth over the occupied landscaping territory promoting a clean, stable environment for the allied shrubs and decorative plants. Dragonwife did want be to enlist the aid of something called Blackwater weed spray to put down the hidden insurgent weeds in the ground. But I had better sense than using an extremely expensive product that no matter what poisoned the surrounding areas causing more problems than it was worth by harming the good shrubs and plants. With the weed block cloth laid out, firmly pined down into the ground, and every bale of pine straw deployed to blanket and secure the landscaping territory- always better to do this early in a mission- it was time to withdraw the remaining supplies and recover to the house to enjoy an afternoon lunch and more than a few beers. I’ve seen some neighbors embark on similar landscaping missions which were totally unneeded since whatever troublesome weed they had were completely contained in a small place and with minor operations were kept in check. But some people just can’t control their stupid urges and want to show off to prove how big a man they are by embarking on poorly planed and cheaply executed operations. Its easy to figure such people out, they come up to neighbors looking for help to pull their ignorant asses out of the fire. Some even mark time throwing more resources and money into an operation until they can turn it over to someone else and then slink off and criticize the person trying to solve the issues they created. It’s a damn good thing no such person could ever achieve a high level office or job, man they could really screw a lot of people and waste a lot of money.

Later after I cleaned up, had my lunch, and was enjoying the latest in a series of very cold Coronas with my feet propped up on the couch wanting to enjoy the quiet afternoon. Dragonwife stormed into the living room sometime later and started carrying on about how the larger decorative landscaping island in the backyard was a breeding ground of weeds which would soon be finding their way to the newly established landscaping regime I had created in the front yard. She said that the time was now to do something about the threat to all the stable attractive work we had done today. I ran outside to recon and access the threat to all the work and money put into today’s operation and decided that to tackle a new area much larger than what I worked on that day with the strained and stretched resources available right then would have been a very bad idea. As much as Dragonwife carried on saying that many of the lawn care experts reported that the time was right to defeat the evil axis of weeds I simply smiled at her as I sipped my beer and told her to get all the armchair lawn care experts crying about the evil weeds into the field to do their share of work. Dragonwife said I then walked off muttering something about drafting all the damn Chickenhawks to fight the dreaded weeds but figured after all the beers I had drank was confusing the situation and let it go.