Mowing the Lawn With Girls and Preschoolers....

The other day I had to mow the lawn again. First of all I find it slightly apocalyptic that I am even having to mow my lawn in April and May in Maine, but regardless of how odd being in a tank top in the beginning of May was making me feel, it had to be done.

I use this term, lawn, lightly because I believe that a lawn consists of lush green grass….ours is lush green clover, with lots of yellow dandelions dotting the landscape. And the moles have made lots of mounds where the dead patches are from the grubs…you get the picture…mowing is really more trimming the crabgrass and wild flowers than mowing…

This has become a battle between my husband and I, as he is from the south…the land of manicured lawns, and football games in the front yard. I on the other hand had a family that was akin to hermits and had big trees growing right up to the house, so lawn was more…well…pine needle covering.

As I was going over and over a patch of oh…400 dandelions, I looked up to find my daughter blowing the dandelion offspring onto my lawn to seed even more of the demonic flower that is taking over my yard. “Making a wish,” she yelled to inform me, incase I didn’t know what she was up to.

It was then, as I pictures all the jars, plastic sippy cups, bowls and pots full of these beautiful flowers that have been sacrificial offerings to the mommy god by a little boy who quite honestly needs to be sacrificing something to continue living, that I realized this was an exercise in futility.

I realize that I will not win the lawn battle…not with out waging a major chemical warfare, which frankly is just not really my style. So I will just continue to find containers for my flower offerings, make wishes on the baby lawn killers when I am asked to, and continue to expand my garden into the entire yard…until my husband kills me, or the kids stop wanting to give me flowers, or move out… Until then, I will have just gaze on my bluewhites, dandelions, crabgrass, and brown patches with a sense of defeat, and enjoy the sunshine on a nice May day.