Dear friends and neighbors,

I know some of you are whispering about us. I see you from the window as you walk by. You glance over at our lawn, shake your heads disapprovingly, and mumble under your breath.

You’re whispering about our grass, aren’t you? I’ll admit it’s a little long at the moment.

OK, it’s beyond long.

OK, OK! It’s a freaking tallgrass prairie!!

Any day now, cowboys will swoop in from the Flint Hills on horseback and set it aflame! Photographers will come from far and wide to capture the burn on film. Artists will paint it and hang their fiery interpretations in galleries with $5,000 price tags!

Please, don’t send us a polite but firm letter. I assure you, there’s a very good reason for our unkempt landscape.

Our mower is in the shop, you see. It’s been there for three weeks. My husband didn’t think it would be a problem, given the drought and all.

Until it rained.

The machine in question is a 1977 Toro Wheel Horse riding mower that my husband inherited from his father. We were excited, at first. Our new yard was big – really big – and hilly, to boot. That shiny red tractor would make lawn care a breeze. It even had a contraption that picked up leaves.

We’d have our weekends back!

We happily sacrificed half of our double garage to Big Red and looked forward to living happily ever after with a tidy, manicured lawn.

The honeymoon was over before we could say John Deere.

Soon, as if possessed by some kind of 16-horsepower poltergeist, that tractor became the carbon-emitting, gear-grinding, ear-splitting, chronically dysfunctional bane of my husband’s existence.

And yet, his devotion endured.

For two years, every time he needed to mow, he would push the red monster out of the garage in order to jump-start the battery. Every single time. For two YEARS!

Through several seasons, one of the tires had a slow leak that no one in town was able to repair. So what did my husband do? He’d pump air into that tire every week, then pray it would hold up long enough to get the front and the back yards clipped. The tension on mowing day was palpable.

There were summers when he’d have to feed the motor massive amounts of oil, lest it would die when mowing downhill. Sometimes, I’d look out the window, see him stalled on a steep slope, his fists pounding the steering wheel, and hope that you – our dear neighbors – were mowing your own lawns so you couldn’t hear the profanity.

Now, the Horse is back in the stable again. Something about the blankety-blank blower.

Will my husband ever let go of that hunk of junk? Trade it in for a new model? Something in green and yellow, perhaps? Or, better yet, a cool new hybrid electric lawn vehicle that would make Al Gore envious? Are you kidding me? We’re talking about a man who still has the first album he ever owned! (For the record: Johnny Horton’s “Greatest Hits.”)

The other day, I suggested we might want to call someone else to mow the Front 40, just this once. I told him that people were starting to talk and that I was sure I saw buffalo grazing by the fence.

“I am NOT hiring anyone else to cut my grass,” he barked. “We’ll just have to wait to get Big Red back.”

In a way, I admire his loyalty. After all, some of my parts are starting to wear out. My battery runs down a little faster than it used to. And while I might not have wheels, there’s a certain degree of deflation going on these days, if you catch my drift. At 51, I appreciate having a spouse with an anti-disposable mindset.

And so, friends and neighbors, I ask for your patience. Our yard soon will return to its former, uniformly cut glory.

In the meantime, bring your cameras and keep your eyes peeled for buffalo the next time you walk by. And if you get an irresistible urge to light a match some evening, feel free to throw it our way.

Sincerely,

Your neighbor, Cathy