“Anyone who’s house payment is more than his boat payment has screwed up priorities”

-Jim M., Island Time

On Sunday I was working in my ‘shop’ cleaning up a few things – fabricating some parts for ‘Divs new Bimini. The rest of the crew were cleaning up around the homeport, getting things ready to move to the new location. The weather was warm, a marked contrast from Saturday, when another winter gale pummeled Olivia on her moorings while I tried to make some measurements and install a few items down below. In fact it was so windy and rough that I had to hold on to things in order not to get tossed about in the nether world that is ‘Divs ‘down below’.

While I was wrestling with the Avon dink, repacking it in it’s canvas cover, my daughter (one of the twins) Savannah appeared in the garage asking if she could mow the African Savannah which our lawn had become. Standing about three feet tall in places, I was afraid that perhaps it might be serving as a refuge for Cascabel (rattlesnakes), or that maybe she would stumble upon Jimmy Hoffa’s remains somewhere out there in the ‘thicket’, but nonetheless, hesitantly I agreed.

If you have followed this journey at all, then you know my opinion of lawns.

Lawns serve as useless ornamentation for a homeport, and are better replaced by dock infrastructure, or at the very least, low maintenance rocks. If the eye absolutely insists on a verdant landscape, than why not pour a concrete slab and paint it green with a good polyurethane topside paint like Interlux or something? I have no time for lawns or other terrestrial accoutrements, but acquiesce only because of the admiral and my crew.

Besides, lawns are a truly dangerous thing, as evidenced by the number of people who succumb annually in the course of their maintenance and upkeep. It is a subject I have harped on extensively before and will not do so again in the discourse of this entry, except to reiterate my strict “No Lawns Policy” of 2008.

So after finishing servicing our 1200 watt portable generator, I went inside to get a drink, listening to the happy sounds of the lawn mower outside. “I sure have good children” I thought to myself as I mused over a recent visit with my Dads old friend Dick Ostos up in Arroyo City, who remarked that he too genuinely hated lawns, and the happiest, most gratifying sound of the week was when his lawn care mans mower could be heard on Monday mornings, a time when he could genuinely take pride in the perfect lawn that he did not have to do a thing to maintain.

Suddenly, my pastoral reverie was shattered by the sounds of silence. As in, the silence of the non-sounds of a lawnmower engine not running.

Alarmed,  I walked out on the front porch, and there was Savannah eying the gnarliest, most overgrown portion of the lawn, a rectangular plot complete with sunflower blossoms and dense bamboo like growth. I shuddered thinking of Steven Kings “Children of the Corn”.

Pobresita.

I knew that she had bitten off more than she could chew with this one. I could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice.  No, this was no kind of territory for a mere kid to navigate. Lush vegetation like this requires all of the skill and cunning a true professional possesses, someone who wasn’t afraid to step in there and get the job done. It was dangerous, risky business. Lesser men have died in their quest to conquer the sinful overgrown jungle called lawn. I knew that there might be bloodshed before it was all said and done.

So, like the good captain that I am……..I hollered for the admiral to complete the task.

As I have said. Lawns have no place in a sailing mans vocabulary.