A new resolution.
Each year about this time, I start my annual barrage over My Neighbor Dave.
He has the most beautiful lawn. Seriously. I had a girlfriend come over one time, and she couldn’t remember my house number, but from my constant Facebook status updates of My Neighbor Dave’s yard she knew immediately knew that my house was the one just across the street from The One With the Beautiful Lawn.
And for the past three years of my Stay-At-Home-Momdom, every March I’ve watched what he’s done to his lawn and then I fly out the door to do that exact thing to ours. Not only that, but I’ve coerced my other neighbors in with me on renting that one thing from Home Depot that looks like a rototiller-but-not but just dredges up all of your old grass, so you can then run over your lawn with the lawnmower and just tidy up with those neat little lawn bags full of the old stuff, leaving you ready for the new stuff. Miraculously, this also happens on trash day, so off go the neat little lawn bags, right away.
He did that rototiller-but-not thing yesterday.
I swear to you that he has a direct line to Mother Nature, because yesterday was gorgeous and perfect for messing around outside, and today is chilly and I don’t wanna.
Last year when he did this? It was perfect on the day of his lawn care, and then the next day it snowed and nicely packed down all of that fertilizer that he had thrown down. When the snow melted two days after? Green lawn over there, surrounded by brown-and-dead-and-ugly from the rest of us.
You have no idea just how many bad words I want to say now, all as adjectives for My Neighbor Dave’s Perfect Lawn.
My husband hates the First Day That My Neighbor Dave Does His Lawn Day. He hates it because there I go, talking about this and that fertilizer and mowing to this exact height and, “Where is that exacto-knife-thingy that cuts all the grass away from the sidewalk and leaves a perfectly edged lawn?”
Oh. Maybe that’s called an edger.
And by the way, I think I completely killed our front lawn at the end of the summer last year because I mowed it too short for the winter. It’s not looking so good. In fact, I’m quite certain that if I did rent one of those rototiller-but-nots, it would just leave dirt.
Rats.
So this year, I resolve something new. I do not resolve to try to beat My Neighbor Dave this year. I will concede The One With the Beautiful Lawn award to him without a conniption. Instead, I will do this.
I will gaze out my front window and appreciate the beauty of his lawn and the fruits of labor and toil (all the while knowing he’s looking at my crap excuse of a lawn and cursing me…).
I will compliment him without my usual onslaught of, “How did you…” and “What did you use…”
I will continue to mark myself on the map as The One Who Lives Across The Street From The One With the Beautiful Lawn.
I will, sometimes late at night when I know he’s asleep so he won’t come yell at me, sneak over and take my flip flops off, just to let my toes sink into that luscious, cool, perfect grass. And then I’ll fluff it back up so he won’t suspect anything.
I will embrace that the grass is always greener at My Neighbor Dave’s.
Besides. Brown is pretty.
