The Green Green Grass of Home

The Green Green Grass of Home

This is the first year we have gone from yard bags to "green cans". And this is the first week this year that I'm able to fit all my grass cuttings into my two "green cans". Thank-you hot, dry weather!
I have, in weeks past, been able to get the back and front greenery to fit in both cans, but not legally. I took a page from the K-Tel Patty Stacker of the Seventies and fashioned a similar compressing device for the rear end deposits of my lawnmower. What I wound up with was grass that had the density of lead in two neat cans. Oh sure I had to have three friends help me drag each can to the curb, but I wasn't going to buy any more garbage cans.
My Father-in-law has enough garbage and "green cans" to meet his needs but his carport looks like an East Hastings back alley.
Well as it turned out the joke was on me, they didn't want my two cans of yard waste. Something about being too heavy, the bright orange sticker read. So now what do you do with two cans of wet grass, knowing that this week you'll have the same amount, or more,again.
You get creative!
I became like the prisoners from the movie "The Great Escape". I'd fill up my pockets with grass and go for long walks, each step secretly dropping bits of grass around the neighborhood. We'd sometimes go as a family, each with a pocket or two of grass, leaving behind us a green slug trail of unwanted yard trimmings. On occasion we'd get lucky and find an unlocked car and quickly rid ourselves of our burden we call grass.
But all this still wasn't enough, I couldn't keep up. I was like a drug kingpin with too much money, only with grass, I needed new methods to deal with a "growing problem"! I rented a storage locker under a false name and address. I had the grandkids do a craft project and glue the yard clippings into illegal looking plants (unbeknownst to them) and had the police raid my residence. (On a side note, I told the police I had drilled some holes into logs at my Father-in-laws place and hit what looked like "grass" in the wood. They cut up and split his wood pile for him. He phoned to thank me.)
I then tried just leaving the cuttings on the lawn, only to have the dog and the grandkids track it all into the house for my wife to vacuum up. Let's just say I'd rather deal with the police again than listen to my wife go on for two hours about her bad back and how she needs a new vacuum with a big yellow ball on it like her sister has.
But this week was different! All my green-space clippings are gone! The lawn I use to love, water and fertilize, I now despise. I'll never give it another drink or feed it again. My three boxes of plastic yard bags from Costco sit unused and alone. Gone is the time when you only had to walk out and back from the curb on collection day. Oh I guess you could wait outside like Forrest Gump waiting for a school bus with your "green cans" and save a trip, but me? I've got things to do. Cool wet weather's coming, where can I hide grass this Fall?

Bob Niles


bobby did this