May Ends

It has been raining for days. And before that, it was raining for more days. On May 29, the local weather station announced that May, 2016, is the wettest May on record for central Virginia.

Today is Tuesday and it’s not raining, it’s just hot and humid, but the forecast calls for thunderstorms for tomorrow and every day until next Monday, so this afternoon I mowed the yard. The grass was a little wet, but I knew if I waited another six days to mow, I would have to hack my way through backyard jungle to get to my garage where my mower lives.

There was a time when I tried to try to keep my yard well manicured: grass cut short, sidewalk and curb edged, bushes trimmed. This year I reached my Popeye moment. To keep the city happy, I will mow 98% of my grass; the remaining hard-to-reach 2% can go crazy: grow tall, create seed heads, do anything it wants. The bushes in front of my house which, in the past I have always tried to keep neat and trim, are now shaggy, green monsters. When I look at them, my predominant feeling is not “they need trimming” but rather “they need to be cut down.”

Patches of my front lawn are dying off, leaving islands of green grass. This is the first year this has happened to my lawn, and it made me wonder, what’s up with my lawn? Why are there so many places where not just grass but weeds, too, cannot grow? Then one morning I happened to open my front window blinds in time to see my across-the-street neighbor letting her dog out of her house. My city has a leash-law, which means dogs must be kept in a fenced yard or on a leash. Nevertheless, people snub their noses at this law all the time. So the woman across the street lets her dog out, and the dog comes across the street to my yard, and it pees, and it trots back across the street and into her house. This must be a morning ritual for the dog. Lovely. No wonder my yard looks like it’s been bombed with grass-killer. I shake my head: people.

The woman who lives in the house beside my across-the-street neighbor owns cats. (Assuming it’s possible to own cats. My theory is you can’t own cats, you can only feed them.) Her cats are always in my yard. They poop in my yard, they pee in my yard. There is no leash law for cats. The city says “cats catch mice ergo, cats good.” I’ve seen her cats catch birds in my yard; I’ve seen her cats kill and eat squirrels in my yard. My front and back yards are decimated by voles – their tunnels are everywhere, and the tunnel entrances are big enough for a full-grown rattlesnake to slither through. I ask, where are the neighbor’s cats when you need them? They poop, they pee, they kill birds in my yard, but the voles destroying my yard get a free pass?! I shake my head: cats.

When half my lawn is gone, the two neighbors across the street, the one with the dog and the one with the cats, will probably complain to the city that I’m not keeping my yard up. They’ll want the city to make me do more to make my lawn pretty. People: they’ll piss on you and then get mad at you for smelling like pee.