The Mighty Sword of Foliage Repression

I’m not sure I understand this yard thing. Before we bought the house i was fine with grass. We could co-exist in peace but overall really saw no need for it. I even claimed, on several occasions, that if i ever had a house I’d probably xerascape the entire yard to get rid of all that water sucking St. Augustine and return my section of Texas to it’s natural splendor.

Then I got a mower. And a trimmer. And I got entirely obsessed.

To be fair, we’re still a bit hippie about it. We don’t put a lot of crap chemicals on the lawn. We let it grow a little taller than most folks in the ‘hood. We spray beneficial nematodes on it every spring.

But when it gets tall enough and dry enough, I love firing up the equipment and crafting a perfectly trimmed grass plane. I’d like to say it has something to do with pride in where you live, but for me it’s actually the act of yard care itself that i seem to enjoy. Wielding the destructive power of the weed-eater (also know as the-mighty-sword-of-foliage-repression). Mom, Dad ? You’re weekend-work-camps have successfully brainwashed me. I have become Hank Hill.

Here’s some numbers. At last mowing/trimming and clean up I burned off about 460 calories, in about an hour, with a peak-heart-rate of 129 (yup I’m a big old dork, who wore a hear rate monitor while mowing). That’s not huge but it’s something. That’s about what I do in half an hour on the stationary bikes at the “we want you to hate your body” Golds Gym that we pay to go to.

If I ever decide to get out this graphic design gig, I can start a personal-trainer/manual-labor service. Get all the folks normally at Golds on the tread mills and have them push mowers. I’d be rich in no time. No, seriously. That, or Gold’s should hook up all those treadmills and elliptical machines to generators, and we could power entire cities with fitness buffs with poor self image. They already have the “Don’t you feel ugly ?” propaganda campaign going, they just need a little bit of hardware. But I digress…

Faulty business plans aside, I really don’t think we’re made to sit and stare at computer screens as much as we do. Maybe we need to get out and walk around more, thus the obsession with my grass. There’s something very deeply satisfying about taking care of your land too. Maybe it goes back to my families farming roots. Or more likely I’ve just become fully and utterly suburbanized. Next thing you know I’ll be drinking Michelob Ultra and watching NASCAR, shouting “Go Fast, Turn left !!!!!”

*shudder*