Green Grass of Home

Any time things go right, it’s a fluke, an error of nature and a curse. And if you have any sense at all, you won’t spend any time wishing for situations to work out the way you want them. Because when they do, all it means is that the next time they go wrong, you’re really going to get it.

All people must suffer the same overall amount of trouble in their lives and if it doesn’t come in small amounts, it’ll all fall from the skies in one or two big lumps. The person with the minor daily aggravations can pretty well expect more of the same, day after day. His neighbour, on the other hand, whose life seems so charmed it is almost magical, will own the only house on his street to be struck in a lightning storm.

I am happy to report that I appear to be one of those people who slips and slides down the frozen ponds of everyday life like a kid on his first pair of skates. That is why I expected lots of problems when I had the lawns around my house ripped up and seeded with grass last week. And why I’m grateful the troubles sprang up long before the new grass did. I don’t mind if Fate steers my vehicle in and out of the odd ditch if that’ll keep the two of us from driving off a cliff together.

Therefore, I wasn’t bothered when I caught my cats digging holes here and there in the freshly cultivated, freshly seeded soil a half hour after the landscapers wished me luck and left. The cats knew the land needed fertilizing so they got right at it. To them, my property had just become 700 square yards of litter box.

I was pleased, as well, when a gale-force wind came up Sunday and blew a bushel or two of grass seed off the front lawn and onto the sidewalk. As I swept the seeds back onto the lawn, I smiled to think what major disaster in my life this small irritation had served to ward off.

My good luck-bad luck got even better-worse when the neighbour’s huge dog escaped his leash one afternoon and ran across the freshly watered soil, leaving prints the size of potholes in the earth. Another person might have been upset but I could only be grateful that this little problem had probably averted a bigger one.

After four days with no rain, it looked like things might finally start going my way Sunday night when it began to pour down but, I sniffed in relief when I saw the big hailstones which accompanied the cloudburst and which left little craters all over my yards.

I was similarly happy to look out my window one evening this week to see the emerging lawns black with the busy bodies of dozens of ravenous birds that had dropped in for a feast of grass seed and a shower under my sprinklers, a sort of surf and turf special on the fly, an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of seed. And when I took my cat Grumbles – an animal that at all other times of the year climbs onto rooftops and up 80-foot trees to catch birds – over to see the flocks which were munching and bathing in my yards, I was pleased when she looked at them kindly and then looked at me as if to say, “But Jim, birds are my friends,” and then lay down on the sidewalk and watched them carry on with their meal. After all, if she’d chased the birds away and my grass was allowed to grow as it should, I would know I was in for a big streak of bad luck somewhere down the road.

Despite all these welcomed setbacks, however, the grass is growing like crazy and if something else doesn’t happen soon, I’m probably going to end up with a nice lawn. This is worrisome but with any luck at all, there’ll be another drought and watering ban next summer and the grass will dry up, die and blow away.

This, on the other hand, is likely to happen only if I don’t want it to.

It is possible to outsmart Nature and Karma and whatever else is lurking about. But you have to be quick on your feet.

©1988 Jim Hagarty

Author: Jim Hagarty

I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.