Eventually, lots of flowers and NO lawn |
What follows is an excerpt from the second Of Moose and Men volume, which is currently under development. It is tentatively subtitled, Home is where the harm is, and should be available by the end of July.
The piece was written when we put the lawn in at the house we just left. The yard was entirely barren when we started, and the mutts were tracking in mud and dirt with every trip they took out. The full piece is significantly longer, but I hope you enjoy this shortened sneak peek.
We have never
had occasion to use a rototiller before.
There simply has never been any need.
If we needed any ground in the yard torn up, we just let our dogs do the
work. We used one of those chain spikes
and moved them around every day or so, and they would dig up a new spot. With the dogs, and absolute minimal effort on
our part, I’d bet we could churn up a forty acre tract in just a few days.
I wasn’t
worried about joining the mechanical revolution. After all, I reasoned, how tough could it be
to run a rototiller? I’d seen ads with a
petite lady standing behind a rototiller, holding onto it with just one hand,
under the caption, “ROTOTILL WITH JUST ONE HAND!”. In the picture, the petite lady looks very
happy.
In real life,
the petite lady in the ad was smiling because the rototiller had been turned
off for the picture. She was holding
onto the contraption with only one hand because if she’d have let go with both
hands, she would have fallen over from exhaustion. But those were things yet to be discovered as
I merrily left the nursery, excited to begin the great lawn adventure.
After talking
to the local nursery, I was almost looking forward to the job. It wasn’t the thought of having some lush,
green expanse of lawn spreading out for our enjoyment. What seemed so fun about the entire affair
was the prospect of running a rototiller.
This seemed like a dream come true: the opportunity to play with
something like a super power tool without buying it. Better yet, if it broke, someone else had to
fix it.
I headed over
to the rental place. Once there, the
first question the guy behind the counter asked was how big an area needed to
be tilled.
“Oh... the
lot’s about an acre...”
“An
acre!” The guy behind the counter became
very excited. He must have had a balloon
payment on a condo in Hawaii coming up.
“We’ve got a tractor with a tiller attachment that would be perfect for
a job like that. It comes with a trailer
and...”
“Great,” I
quickly interrupted, before his drooling could spill over the counter and get
my shoes wet, “but we’re only putting a lawn into a little perimeter around the
house.”
“Oh.” His enthusiasm waned visibly. “I suppose you just want a regular rototiller
then. Go around back, and Jake will load
it up for you.”
At the
loading dock, the rototiller was wheeled out for my inspection. As I looked it over, Jake asked, “You ever
run one of these before?”
That was an unfair question. No man, when standing in a public place, is
ever going to admit he has no idea how to run something that has a motor in
it. That basic fact is what made the
entire movie “U-571” plausible. The fact
the American crew had never even seen a German submarine before, and everything
in it was labeled in German was of no consequence. The boat had a motor and props- OF COURSE
THEY WOULD KNOW HOW TO RUN IT. Heck, a
seventeen year old male from Coon’s Creek, Iowa would know. It’s a guy thing.
With my
assurance that I was fully knowledgeable about the world of rototillers, Jake
gave me a complete rundown on starting the thing.
“Push that,
punch this, turn that knob,” he explained as he waved his hands generally about
the machine, “pull the rope and you’re set to rock ‘n roll.” He finished up by swiping his hand across a
set of levers. “Drive, tiller, gears,
clutch on the grip, and you’re good to go.
Good luck.”
Back at the
hacienda, with the rototiller unloaded and the future lawn spread out before
me, I mentally went through Jake’s instructions. Miraculously, the thing started up. It even started churning dirt after playing
with the levers for a few moments.
Mrs. Poynor
came out to observe the progress. “How’s
it going?”
“Piece of
cake,” I replied glancing back at the thirty feet of freshly tilled earth
behind me, “it jumps around a little but mostly it’s... YIEEEE!!!”
The
rototiller had unilaterally decided it was time to stretch out and see what it
could do on open ground. It streaked
across the hard clay, dragging me behind as I frantically slapped at levers
with one hand and clung desperately to the other grip. It wasn’t until the contraption outran my
grasp that it stopped.
“Ah, yes:
‘clutch on grip.’ Gotta remember that.”
The race for
life was repeated every time the rototiller encountered a tree root or
particularly hard patch of clay until my smarter half pointed out the
contraption had a drag.
“Good find,”
I complimented her, “I was beginning to think my obituary was going to read
like a marriage vow: Tilled, then death
did us part.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty hard to see that large print
on the case.”
We outlasted the birds for too much lawn at the old place. |
With the
ground all churned up, putting in the lawn became a simple matter of raking it
smooth and tossing out the grass seed.
From that point on, in my mind, the lawn was done. Little did I know we would have problems with
lawn predators.
Not a bird
had been seen around the bird feeder since we had hung it immediately upon
moving in. It had sat there, pregnant
with rich, black oil sunflower seeds and tasty black thistle, completely
ignored. Immediately after spreading
grass seed, however, the place came alive with birds. Entire flocks swooped down to pick off what was
essentially $15 a pound bird feed. It
became a daily ritual to go out and spread more seed. It looked like we were feeding miniature
chickens.
Persistence
paid off, however, after the second week, a light green fuzz appeared. With the emergence of the new growth, the
birds switched their attention to the feeder.
“Finally,” I
sighed in relief, “the birds have given up.
I guess we just put out more than they could eat.”
“I think it’s
more of a selective taste for seeds,” Mrs. Poynor replied.
“What makes
you say that?”
SHAMELESS PLUG: You'll have to wait for volume 2, but the original Of Moose and Men is currently available for both Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook e-readers. At 99 cents, it's less than a third the price of the fancy coffee you'll spew out your nose while reading it.
Just wish we could have seen your adventure! Can't wait for the next book!
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