Sunday, November 23, 2008

A Tale of Two Lawns

Psycho lawn care neighbors seem to follow me or I, them. Voldemort (my ex) and I lived next door to a guy who used to cut and landscape his lawn a minimum of once a week. Pete didn't just edge his lawn, he had a two-inch wide and two-inch deep moat running around all edges of his lawn that he SWEPT after cutting the grass. He would chastise me regularly if any of our grass clippings blew onto his side of our shared space. We were also pretty confident at the time that he was running a meth lab out of his bathroom. The fact that he was a 40-something white guy who was far too popular with black teenagers and unemployed seemed to justify our neighbor paranoia. Perhaps he was a tutor or they were helping him with his computer, but there was an awful lot of traffic over there. I'm just sayin'. I had planned to place some bleach-induced "crop circles" on his perfect lawn at some point, but was evicted by the Big V before I got the chance.

I moved three years ago and found Pete's soul mate. This guy doesn't sell drugs (that I know of, but I'm watchin' him) but he is equally obsessed with his lawn. And to make matters worse, he is an obsessive leaf blower. He cranks that thing up at 7 am on the weekends and keeps it going for at least an hour during the summer. He seems to spend most of that time blowing the grass clippings out of his edging trough! What is it with these guys? Now that it's fall, he's cut back to about 30-40 minutes. His lawn is as yellow and dead as can be, but damn if it isn't perfectly edged. I just find the whole leaf blower thing about the rudest thing you can do. Besides the noise, he blows all the leaves off of his property and into the street -- where they then take flight into his neighbors' yards. Rude! I'm fairly confident he's out there for hours on end on the weekends in an effort to avoid his wife. She's a very large woman. She struts between the front door and her car (the only time she's outside) as if she owns that place. He's in the Navy, but she's definitely his superior. I actually saw them fighting outside one day and while he was ignoring her and using the leaf blower to drown out her screams, she starting smacking him upside the head with her slipper! He just kept ignoring her and she eventually proceeded on her way to the car.

I know he's going to snap some day and I hope it's not on me because my lawn isn't up to his standards. This comic was in our local paper yesterday and it sums my feelings up perfectly:



Hi Mrs. Schmidt!

2 comments:

Bert said...

I must be honest – not only do I blow, I blow frequently and with a passion (I might be a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to this). But it’s not just me. Blowing is something that the guys in the neighborhood enjoy doing together.

Anyone can blow – the real pleasure is in finishing the job properly. That is when we suck. My neighbor Paul has a large, industrial vacuum that does great at cleaning up afterwards. Paul also has a great edger so he is in charge of the “bikini wax” (as he likes to put it).
Waxing is really catching on with the guys in the neighborhood. It just looks…cleaner.

I can’t tell you how many weekends we have spent together waxing, blowing & sucking. And our wives don’t really seem to mind. It’s harmless fun and it keeps us from pestering them for a while.

AJ said...

I've seen pics of your lawn and was fairly certain you'd see yourself in this. Subtle comments, btw. ;)