Since it’s really hard for me to love what I can’t see, as soon as my kids trot off to school the next morning, I sneak into my son’s bedroom and grab an old microscope off a dusty bookshelf, sagging under the weight of cracked, dismembered and beheaded kindergarten art projects.
He really needs to clean out his room, I grumble (which, of course, is different from whining and complaining when used by a mother talking about her own children), wondering where in the world did he pick up his housekeeping habits, and step outside into the blazing sun.
With all the weeds popping up left and right, focusing on anything desirable growing in my yard is next to impossible. I swing the microscope around and am blinded by the sprawling emerald-green of the thick lush lawn of the honorary lifetime member of Better Homes and Gardens Yard of the Month club – AKA my next-door neighbor Bob. The sight generates waves of nausea interspersed with a desire to leave this world and attend to the greener pastures thereafter. With the microscope still attached to my eyeball, amidst the aforementioned sprawling green suddenly, Ka-booom! I spot an enormous mutant weed – and flowering weed at that! I am horrified and strangely pleased at the same time.
Hah! I knew it! I knew there were weeds in his yard!
I drop down on all fours and start inspecting his turf. Sure enough, there are about eleven superhumongousy enormous mutant weeds – located mostly next to my property line - and the total of three about to bloom and spread their nasty seeds all throughout the neighborhood.
I must not allow this! My noble sense of neighborly duty interspersed with an irrepressible urge to point all this out sweeps over me. I consider making large signs with pointing arrows and posting them next to his driveway. While still preoccupied with both inspecting his yard and crafting the best course of action to eliminate the threat of weed contamination it represents to our neighborhood, I feel something wet and slippery all over my face.
Whatcha doing here, neighbor? Bob tilts his head curiously examining a strange sight of a middle-aged woman with her butt sticking up in the air, standing on all fours holding a microscope attached to her eyeball in the middle of his front yard, being licked to death by his equally curious dogs. I clear my throat with a nervous cough as I straighten out.
Well, Bob… it is my neighborly duty to inform you that I found some weeds… eleven weeds to be more precise… growing in your yard. And three of them…
Before I could continue, the look on Bob’s face tells me that he might have something to say.
I appreciate yer attention to details… but don’t ya’ have ‘nough stuff to do in yer own yard before you bother inspecting my grass, with amicroscope, and count my weeds?!!! Then he adds,
By the way, my puppies were sick and I was a nervous wreck all day yesterday, so I baked a dozen chocolate cream pies. Would you like one?
That day, my great neighbor Bob taught me that minding my own business is lesson number one in all yard-work.
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