A few days ago Kiki asked if she could mow the lawn rather than having to do Saturday house cleaning chores. I’ve not been looking forward to solving the problem of lawn mowing. I hadn’t yet decided whether to hire a neighborhood boy or just buy a new mower and do it myself. Giving the job to Kiki is a possibility that I’d considered, but I really didn’t want to have to fight over lawn mowing. So when she volunteered to give it a try I figured it would be a good experiment. I want to see if she’ll still be as excited about mowing the lawn after she has actually done it once.
Since we currently do not own a mower I borrowed one from my backyard neighbor. We put gas in it and Kiki got started on the front yard. In order for Kiki to mow the back yard, there was a considerable amount of picking up to be done. One of the items that needed picking up was our saucer shaped snow sled. Apparently it had been acting as a little greenhouse for the last couple of weeks because underneath it was a circle of tall green grass. The kids were all amazed at this beautiful tall grass. Gleek in particular fell in love with this little patch of summer. She was extremely dismayed to learn that we intended to mow it. We then had our own little environmental protest in the back yard. It came complete with a civil disobedience sit in. Gleek plunked herself in the middle of the patch of grass and refused to move. She got the neighbor kids to come and sit with her. The only thing they didn’t have was signs and chanting although I’m sure they would have done that too if they had thought of it.
I had yet to decide what to do about the demonstration when Kiki needed help with a different section of grass that was especially long and weedy. I pushed the mower over the weeds and CRUNCH! The mower hit a large rock. That was the end of the mowing because the rock bent the mower blade so badly that it put an end to all mowing until the blade can be replaced. I had to go confess to my neighbor that I’d broken his mower. He was really nice about it and I’ve offered to pay for the replacement blade.
So the yard remains only partially mowed. With the threat of mowing no longer imminent the protesters have scattered to other activities. What they don’t realize is that later today the blade will be replaced and the little green patch will be mowed. Hopefully by Kiki, although the interruption has dampened her lawn mowing enthusiasm. Within a month the whole yard will be that green, so I doubt the protesters will miss the green patch much.