Lawn fairies

A very strange thing happened on Monday.

I got home. Parked in the garage. Walked into the driveway. Smelled grass. Thought, "hey, someone mowed their lawn." Looked down. Someone had mowed my lawn.

Very strange indeed.

There's a little bit of a backstory to this. Last May, I mowed my lawn. And I had been mowing it about twice a week at that point. In a stunning upset, we stopped getting rain. It was seriously weird. We had a hot, dry summer. The lawn went dormant, so it didn't need mowing. I am not one of those freaks who is willing to run up my water bill to keep the grass green. I water the trees and shrubs, but that's it. Anyway, the hot, dry summer turned to a pleasantly warm, dry fall, and then to a surprisingly mild, dry winter.

Then spring came. And it started to rain. The ski resorts that closed early for lack of snow reopened in March. Oops. Prime grass growing season. Of course, that also meant that the grass was too wet to mow. So it grew and grew. By the time it was dry enough to mow, it was too late. My lawn mower wasn't starting. I borrowed my neighbor's mower, but my grass was too thick to cut. It is currently about armpit deep, but it is too heavy to stand, so it is all laying down. That's just the back yard. The front grows slowly and sparsely, so it is less to cope with. The front yard is the north side of the house - heavy shade and clay for soil.

Anyway, the front yard got weed whacked. My mower is with a neighbor who is fixing it in trade for my old TV. He stopped by one day to see if I was OK because I used to have the nicest yard in the 'hood, and now it looks like the crack house down the road. You'd think nobody lived there based on the "lawn." I told him my sad story (single woman, broken lawn mower, pay cut, undergrad, no free time, boo hoo) and he offered to find someone to take care of it.

Now that the lawn fairies stopped by to cut it, I'll be able to maintain it after I get my mower back . It will be nice to have people not stare in disgust at my yard as they drive past. I think my neighbor fixing my mower is the one that whacked it, but I'm not sure. There was no note, so it could have been any old vigilante yard maintenance guy with a vendetta against knee-deep grass and a heart of gold. Hopefully I'll find out soon.