If I took a picture of the border between my lawn and my next-door neighbor I wouldn't need to type this.
My lawn is litterered with dandelions. Hundreds of them.
His lawn has not one. He has no clover, no crabgrass, no nothing. Just bright green thin-leafed grass.
Me? I got it all, a regular jungle.
He's been in the house a couple of years while we just moved in so I have a bit of an excuse. Still, I have great lawn envy.
So, while Mary and Lucy were in New York, I put down the weed and feed - twice. Plus, I wandered through the yard with the broad-leaf weed killer gun shooting poison on every yellow head I saw.
When I got home from work the other day,Mary had rearranged the table on the back deck and I noticed a jar on the table filled with some rather sad looking dandelions.
Lucy was in the yard picking more.
"Lu
cy," I said, "I wouldn't pick those. Daddy poisoned them."
"Why did you poison the flowers daddy?"
"They're weeds, not flowers."
"They're flowers."
"They're weeds."
"What's a weed?"
"It's a plant you don't want."
"I like these flowers."
I am a monster.
2 comments:
I remember some story I read, maybe by Mary Gaitskill, where these two junkies would get high all weekend -- they looked forward to Fridays like you wouldn't believe -- so they could get in a two-day drug stupor. At the end, late Sundays, I guess, they'd eat a huge salad with one little radish on top. But there was this line about how "She claimed weeds were beautiful."
Which had nothing to do with drugs, but with her tendency to gather dandelions and other waste to "display" in the junkie/junky apartment.
So your little girl reminds me of a very troubling tale of two troubled people, one of which could find beauty in ugliness, sleep for 48 hours straight and still make a helluva salad.
You are not a monster.
we are just a troubling tale of three troubled people.
Mary and I snarled at each other about where Lucy and I would plant tomato seeds.
We were in the garden section of Wal-Mart and Lucy really wanted to buy some tomato seeds. It is too early to put plants in here, so I figured, "what the hell, they'll never grow and they only cost a buck."
So we bought the seeds and a bunch of tiny peat pots.
Then Lucy and I planted them while sitting on the back porch while Mary wanted us on the back deck. She was right. If we were going to be playing with dirt we should have been outside, but I just wanted to get it done. With Lucy any time you spend in preperation just makes her crazy, so I get down to it as fast as I can.
I think we are better now.
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