The Prize Is Mine!

This year's award for the last yard mowed on our Street goes to me. I will spend the rest of this Easter Sunday basking in the good life that awaits me.

Even though I now work at home most days I have been assiduously avoiding yard work during the normal working hours. Do you think this was because I don't want anyone to see me working on the lawn when I should be in the office on the second floor? Nah, not really. It's because I just didn't want to do lawn work - perhaps a gift from Poe's imp of the perverse.

Over the past several weeks I've been in my office listening as a retired neighbor drove his lawn tractor around his yard cutting grass. The professional lawn service companies would come to other yards and work their magic. I'd hear their high-powered equipment droning. I'd give them a look through my street-facing window, and wonder if there was a chance in hell that they would come over and do my lawn also. That hasn't happened yet.

Finally on Wednesday evening the last neighbor with long over-the-winter grass got home early enough to ride his tractor over all of his yard. That meant that the prize was mine. All I had to do was mow my own lawn so that people would know that I wasn't dead or uninterested in the competition.

Today, Easter 2011, I rolled the Honda self-propelled mower from the garage, filled the tank and cut the grass.

My prize? You may be wondering what I won. A free at-home service call for my lawn mower? An azalea for that needs-something spot along the west side of the driveway? A glass of Gatorade?

No. There is no prize. In fact, there was no competition. I didn't attempt to win anything by taking so long to mow my lawn. I have just been too tired and lazy.

But having mown once in the season the next time will be (or at least seem to be) much less of an ordeal. Isn't that so often the case with those chores we put off over and over?