I stepped outside this morning into a heavy fog. So heavy, in fact, that the droplets were condensing on the camera as I tried to aim it. The dead evergreen we call The Bird Sanctuary looked eerie and splendid in the gray light, but this photo doesn't do it justice.
Nor could I get a good shot of the cattle who were bawling for each other in the dense mist. The vapor in the air blocked my attempts at a clear photograph. Still, there's a certain wispy beauty to the attempt.
The grass is lovely in the sifted light - probably because it's growing. And why wouldn't it, after being lovingly cut yesterday, and then watered, and then sunned, and now misted by the fog? In three days' time, it will look as if I never pulled a starter cord all summer.
Do y'all know the origin of the "lawn?" It was an English concept (as any dour Scot could tell you), one of the first widespread examples of conspicuous consumption. Well-to-do homeowners realized that if they devoted large tracts of their home's acreage to the cultivation of nothing but groomed grass, it sent a certain signal to the watching world. And the signal was "See how wealthy I am? I don't have to devote my land to the growing of crops. We're not a hand-to-mouth family, oh, no. We can take good, arable land, and devote it to nothing but grass!" And the mindset took hold, and the next thing the world knew, entrepreneurs were specializing in "how to keep your lawn weed-free." Empires (like that of the malevolent Monsanto Corporation, may their tribe wither within a generation) sprang up around such a mindset. And now, today, even well-meaning but media-suckled adults who ought to know better expend untold dollars and man-hours in weeding, seeding, fertilizing, landscaping, mulching (I detest pine-bark mulch to almost the same degree that I detest Hollywood celebrities), shaping, trimming, and aerating. And for what? An essentially worthless and useless thing: so-called "perfect" grass. Why not use the space to grow vegetables (or at least flowers, which, while not practical, are at least capable of great beauty and use as gifts, crafts, etc.)? How is it that parents will recruit their own children to spend weekends performing the above-mentioned worthless tasks, but will not teach those same children how to cultivate heirloom seeds, or tasty tomatoes, or magnificent potatoes (on which a person may live without any other food, if need be)?
And I say all this as a man who spent two hours yesterday cutting our grass (sans pastures and woodlot) with a push-mower. Am I a hypocrite? I don't think so. Am I weak-willed? Probably. I don't want the area around the house to look like something that would house loincloth-clad savages. But if God allows us, we will have goats and/or sheep in the future who will diminish (and, I hope, completely eliminate) the infernal combustion engine from my Saturdays.
But enough about grass. Let's talk sore throats and chills. I have both. Look upon me and coo in pity. I go to the couch now.
