my life is an overgrown garden

on creating rules for unruly growth

Let’s begin today with an odd question dear reader:

What’s your most despised garden tool?

For those of you who lost a partner to infidelity, I’m anticipating a response of hoe.

Some of you may find a rake problematic.

While the racially intolerant out there will avoid touching a spade at all costs.

My shed is filled with tools of all shapes and sizes. I don’t discriminate.

But there is one tool that I’m not too fond of.

Me?

I hate lawnmowers.

Those damn things cut everything evenly. They are profound agents of conformity and uniformity. Their creations are so boring they might as well be public schools or the culture of any corporation.

I work with a lawnmower of a man. Recently I was telling some of the other wait staff about how Nova Scotians communicate about temerature to some tourists from Texas

Today it is hot. If it were a bit warmer we’d say that it was ‘sum hot’. The next level is right hot. After that the weather is even hotter than that? We’d call it right sum hot. And the days that are hotter than the devils arse crack? We call that ‘right sum Jesus hot’.

He looked afraid.

Well, I wouldn’t be comfortable going that far with the joke…

That’s the issue with lawnmower people.

They’re not comfortable. Not with the joke, not in their skins.

The poor dude. I’ve been there three weeks and he felt such that he needed to try level me out, turn me into another short, controlled blade of grass.

Instead?

He got slapped in the face with a little big dick energy:

No, you wouldn’t be comfortable going that far. I am and that’s why I make more money than you.

He didn’t know how to respond. I can confirm that he did have smoke coming from his ears.

Perhaps he went to get himself a pair of sheers, clippers or a string trimmer.

These devices exist to pick up where lawnmowers can’t go. They trim those nasty edges of weeds, plants and people who dare to stand out, walk with swagger and not bend the knee to respect the established culture of mediocrity.

Lucky for me, I’m like a stubborn bramble of wild rose bushes. You can’t kill this kind of prick. Sure, you might come at me with a pair of clippers and a weed wacker but I’ll only dull your tools.

To get rid of this kind of fool? You need a backhoe.

It’s funny though.

I too discriminate when I cut my lawn. I use a string trimmer.

I cut back the grass and the wheat that’s sprouted up from the chicken scratch that’s been scattered around the yard.

I love to keep big tall clumps of clover.

And the dandelions? Some are cut while others are allowed to thrive - they make great chicken feed.

When it comes to the pennyroyal and goutweed?

I have a policy of scorched earth.

Even this fool who hates uniformity in his garden is still pretty selective about what he allows to thrive.

But lawnmowers?

Lawnmowers are for chumps.

Stay shaggy you hoes.