King of the Yard

The great glaciers of the latest ice age having finally receded, we were left this pleasant spring weekend to confront the detritus left in its wake.

Beneath the melt, our yard bore the distinct characteristics of a drunken archaeological dig on some lost white trash society. An assortment of rusted garden shovels, headless plastic soldiers, bike wheels and cracked buckets, suddenly outed from their winter cocoons, lay damp and faded in the nascent April sunlight.

It's cleanup time in greater Podunky, and with the misguided, coffee-fueled enthusiasm that annually marks the return of yard projects, I donned my camoflauge workin' cap (an affectation of which LSW is none too fond,) pulled on my well worn rawhide work gloves and set out to tame the back 40. Well, really the back 1/2, but a Saturday morning flight-of-fancy is a mans perogative.

Yardwork is a little like childbirth (hear me out, mothers): You go in expecting magical results, but soon find that the labor process is hell and would be much more easily accomplished with powerful tranquilizers flowing through your veins. Yet, somehow, when it's over, you forget all those bad things and can't wait to go through it again.

So I spent most of Saturday and a good part of Sunday diligently ridding the estate of damp leaves, broken branches and discarded toy carcasses, tossing them onto a smoldering pile in the fire pit which sent up the quintessential suburban white devil smoke signal: Come out now. It spring. Bring beer.

Which they did, neighbors on both sides drawn with palpable relief to the chance to stand around and toast to our survival of the winter of 2008. It almost made the dull ache in my shoulders and neck bearable, what with the warming sun and dry grass and cold beer and friendly conversation with people I hadn't seen in months.

Life was sweet and simple at that moment.

Alas, every fluffy puppy dog cloud has its dark pit bull lining, and mine came late Saturday afternoon when, sated with good tidings and good work, I brewed up a cup of organic chai with steamed milk (for I am the most alpha male in the whole pack) and headed for the cozy confines of my expansive front porch.

Armed with tea and novel, I looked forward to a brief spell of quiet reading and relaxation in the brutally ugly but infinitely sturdy rocking chair which I purchased for $10 at a church yard sale two summers ago, and which, with great ceremony, I had retrieved from the garage that very morning.

Dreamily lowering myself into its erstwhile welcoming seat, I was thinking too slowly to react to the slow cracking sound that emanated almost immediately from below. Winter dry rot and the imposing presence of my post-winter survival girth met in a cruel cosmic convergence, and in a milisecond the chair splintered into a pile of shredded kindling.

I was left sprawled on the deck in a puddle of slivers and spilled chai, too stunned even to curse.

Shortly afterward, the discombobulated remnants of said insurgent chair were ablaze in a retaliatory funeral pyre out back, which I saluted with a patiently reworked cup of tea and a feeling of smug accomplishment at my swift and harsh (but fair) administration of justice.

You simply don't mess with the King of the Yard on the first real weekend of spring.