July 14, 1999
DOWN HOME: Praise the Lord,
& please pull that blasted Bermuda
___Progress sure can be a pain in the neck, the back of the thighs, the fingers and about every voluntary muscle group.
___A Saturday in our back yard proved that lesson. As if I needed to learn it all over.
___My rendezvous with this eternal truth was preordained when we landscaped (in the interest of truthfulness, I should say our friend and local yard artiste, David, landscaped) our back yard this spring.
Marv Knox
___Landscaping was a good idea. Last year, our back yard looked like the Mojave Desert of Texas, only without cactus. Grass withered under the closest proof of global warming anybody ever experienced. It was so hot out there, crickets knocked on our back door to ask for water. It was so dry, lizards mugged kids on skateboards, stealing their water bottles.
___But now we have an oasis of green right behind our house. We've got a pear tree, two wax myrtles, six stands of some sort of sawgrass, three tomato plants (since we're hopeful Baptists), a bunch of shrubs I can't identify, as well as flowers that don't bloom much but must taste awfully delicious to rabbits.
___And we've got grass: In our flower beds or whatever you call the mulchy areas where we're growing shrubs and trying to grow flowers and tomatoes.
___We're not trying to grow grass there, of course. But Bermuda has a mind of its own.
___Last summer, the Bermuda languished on the lawn. It rolled over and played dead every time a dandelion, ragweed, milkweed and any other vile vegetation plopped a seed beside it.
___This summer, the Bermuda trajects long, spindly tentacles and attaches itself in the flower beds. It luxuriates in the flower beds. And I spent a whole Saturday hoeing and pulling, pulling and hoeing to clean up those beds. The good news is it looks great and I can touch my toes again. The bad news is that by the time all my scrapes and scratches heal, it'll be time to yank Bermuda out of the beds again.
___God must have a great sense of humor. Why else would Bermuda, which withers on the lawn two feet away, act like our flower beds are the Garden of Eden? Why else would grass, which we love, have roots the size of Lady Bug antennae, while weeds, which we despise, have taproots that can reach to Bora Bora?
___Most of my life, I've figured I'm a condo kind of a guy. The only dirt and grass I've ever really appreciated covers ball fields and parks. Not my yard. Put me in a condominium and save yard-mowing and weed-pulling as eternal rewards for the unregenerate.
___The older I get, however, the more I see yard work as spiritual exercise. It teaches patience and humility, for sure. And it promotes pleas for repentance for all the names you'd like to call errant Bermuda.
___Marv Knox
___Editor
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