The Joys of Mowing the Lawn

So I got a facebook message from my dad when I was in Colorado asking if I would mow the lawn. Now my sister usually mows the lawn for them each week and gets paid but she's really sick so he asked me. Me, other the other hand, well I don't get paid. He offered to pay me but I owe them literally thousands of dollars so, like the good daughter I am, I said I would do it for free. Grace doesn't owe them peanuts so she gets paid. Anyways, I said I would do it and started on it today. Their lawn is big. It's big enough for a rider mower, but of course we don't have one of those when "your own two feet are good enough." So, I mowed the front which was easy but then I went to the back yard and oh my goodness. There's a swingset to mow around, benches my mom had made, trees, and of course her flower beds. Last year, since I owe my parents so much money, I told them that I would try to help out around the house when I'd come home on the weekends so my dad give me this job of oiling or varnishing (I don't know what it was) their huge privacy fence that goes all around the yard. Since I'm lazy I just varnished all the metal handles on all the gates as well. Who wants to take the time to varnish AROUND all the little metal pieces so I just slopped the stuff all over everything. I mean, I figured it would wash off until my dad caught me doing it and told me that it was water proof. Ooops. Well he didn't really catch me. He just went to go out one of the gates and got a hand full of goop. But, I'm not to blame for all of the gate handles. My niece wanted to help me last summer so I gave her a little bucket of the brown oily stuff and she decided it was actually more fun to paint the gate handles then the wood and did a couple herself before grandma stopped her. But anyways, I go to take the mower to the back lawn and the handles on the nice wooden gates are STILL sticky. whooops :) Who would have thought that stuff actually worked and really was water proof.

Anyhow, back to the story. As I'm mowing, I noticed all these wooden posts next to the fence. I couldn't figure out what they were there for and had spent a bunch of time mowing up real close to them so my dad would be super proud that I left no grass behind, but then I realized that there's like these little schrub things planted right next to them. I mean, I kept thinking to myself, "why does my dad have all these wooden posts sticking out in the lawn? What in the world is he doing?" I actually just wanted to rip them out of the ground cause they were such a pain mowing around, but once I realized... well it all made sense, just a few posts too late. So, I probably mowed over like four of my mom's new plants or schrubs or trees. Yeah, I'm sure it will be a while before I hear the end of that one. I still hear about the sticky gate handles from time to time. But I kept mowing and started nagivating AROUND the newly planted bushes but then mowed up a bunch of her flowers. Seriously, who can tell the difference between grass and flowers that haven't bloomed yet. They all just look green to me. I'm not gonna tell her though. Lets see how long it takes for her to notice. I'm sure not that long. She's a master gardener and literaly spends most of her days in the summer outside watching every single flower grow and then subjects me and everyone else to come see them and show me every single flower when I come home to visit. Lets see how much she likes it when she goes out tonight and finds some of them mowed up. But I didn't mean to! It was an accident! Oh well, I guess another oops. But, in my defense... she used to have rock beds around all her flowers and she must have thought that was tacky because they're not there anymore. Oh yeah, I also stepped on a bunch of the strawberry patches when I was trying to mow real close around one of the wooden posts that apparently, now I realize, was actually a new schrub. Total accident and I made sure to not step on the strawberries again. Goodness, I hope my sister gets better soon so she can resume the duty of lawn mowing! But in the process of mowing EVERYTHING up, I did manage to move a sprinkler head before that became a victim of the lawn mower as well; which brings me to another thought and endless debate in my family...

Ok, so I love sitting on the swing in my parent's backyard and smelling fresh cut grass, but everytime, I'm disturbed by their decision to plant pine trees. Yes, that's right folks, I said it. My parents planted pine trees in our backyard. Who does that? They say, "Tara! they're not pine trees!" So maybe they're evergreens or blue spruces or whatever. But seriously... pine trees? They're so nasty that not even grass grows under them. That's how much the earth even hates them. In the midst of all this green luscious grass there's pine trees with a big patch of dirt underneath them because even the grass is smart enough to stay away. What happened to nice leafy trees that kids can climb and hang their tire swings from. And, my other point is... WE LIVE IN THE WOODS. You wanna see a pine tree... take a walk through the black hills. It's like planting sage brush in your yard and calling it pretty. I should have mowed one of those up and coming blue spruce trees is what I should have done. So, despite all the tragic fetalities, my parents sure do have a nice cut lawn.