Don’t kid yourself, bubba ; karma kounts! One of a parade of minor ephiphanies wafting across my transom lately is this:
To live in summer, one must engage the spring.
Feeling the hot breath of my waning zeal over the past few weeks, I decided to stop letting my resentments rule my life and to concentrate on the natural “me.” This is the Me friends find on my book shelves, the Me you find at most of my web pages, in the art and music I cherish and starting last week . . . . my back yard.
One of the last things I did last fall, before the cold set in, I raked my front lawn and dumped the leaves onto a stretch of my concrete driveway that passes through my fenced in back yard. The pile of leaves over the winter has resembled an Indian “long house” rising from the serene and level lie of the turf bhind Casa Kreplach (the name of mon estate). I went to the trouble last fall because I wanted to keep up “a good front,” so to speak. An ill-attended front yard gives the false impression I don’t care about the world. An ill-attended back yard gave the impression I don’t care about my neighbors, an accurate impression. One or two of them (under the pointed sheet of anonymity, they both look alike) has reported my back yard’s state of chronic disrepair to the health authorities. A few times, it was because the grass was longer than ten inches. I missed having to pay a $400 fine by the hair that used to be on my chinny-chin chin). In recent years, the eggregious dismay in the tender hearts of my nebbaz was incited more than twice by the excess, prodigious proliferation of poop (belonging to my Labradors Thelonius Dog and Slick Richard; not earnest blogmeister).
A few weeks ago I decided in that epiphany-ita it was time to stop punishing my nebs for their wrathful actions and start rewarding my own dang self. I began a daily routine that has worked a minor wonderment. If I get out of the sackeroo by 9 a, I always take an hour for lunch, and usually watch the noon replay of the Charlie Rose Show on WSEC. Sometimes I eat nothing more than a few pieces of bread and butter and sip iced tea. In mid-Marzo, I added a half an hour of backyard time at 1, or before 1:00 if Charlie is off his feed so to speak (meaning the show doesn’t nourish my mind as it usually does). The first day out, I raked the driveway leaves I had placed there last October down toward th back fence; as much as I could do without trashing about like a creationist and getting too tuckered out to resume office activity. The usual, web page updates, photo processing and my daily love note to Jodie Foster <— JUST KIDDING! I’ve done it every day I’ve not sub taught. And by Yaweigh, (I know the correct spelling, but I don’t want to write it in vain.) it’s making a dif’ence!.
The driveway leaves were redistributed in the back part of the yard, the area belonging to my Vine Street Nature Conservancy (VSNC) . By far, the most daunting challenge has been raking my back lawn with its fall and winter of leaves untouched by landscape implements. The accumlation of six months of accumulated dog waste in various stages of “return to earth” has come up along with all the leaves, and as I’m sure the “eyes guys” in the houses east and west will tell you, not a “carn sarn minute” (from the 50s ABC TV comedy series The Real McCoys) too soonly! Today, I raked the detritus from between the dog houses the rest of the way to the back fence. There’s still a long way to go, but I’m enjoying the exercise. I’m also enjoying the looks of the back yard (with its many minor faults still awaiting my attention) more than I have in five years.
This effort is also an affirmation of my belief that I will hold on to this fragile thing called life until summer at least. I don’t know HOW, but I believe I will. The voluneer maples in the VSNC area are budding. They will grow, and I will watch them. If I can find grass seed I can afford, I will also witness progress there, the joy of “leaves of grass” as Whitman might have said. I’m building new karma with this. Here’s hoping it generates good-karma results for the world. It already has for me.
Thanks for reading this.
Live long . . . . . . and proper.
