It’s on. The battle lines have not so much be drawn as they have sprung up, as one of the oldest rivalries to plague this big old round Earth of ours reignites. Conflict on so vast a scale cannot help but shape the course of human history. There will be casualties, without doubt, but ultimately good will prevail over evil. I speak, of course, of mankind versus nature. By that I don’t mean some kind of fauna-troubling Bear Grylls-style gastronomic assault. Rather, I’m talking about one man’s heroic battle against his lawn.
It’s on. The battle lines have not so much be drawn as they have sprung up, as one of the oldest rivalries to plague this big old round Earth of ours reignites. Conflict on so vast a scale cannot help but shape the course of human history. There will be casualties, without doubt, but ultimately good will prevail over evil. I speak, of course, of mankind versus nature. By that I don’t mean some kind of fauna-troubling Bear Grylls-style gastronomic assault. Rather, I’m talking about one man’s heroic battle against his lawn.
I had no idea it would be like this. For years, I had led a blissfully ignorant existence in apartments where the closest I got to a garden was a bowl of salad. Say what you want about salad, but it doesn’t require major machinery to keep it in check. That all changed when we departed the inner city hipster-haven that is Elwood for Ormond. When I first saw the lawn in the back yard, I made the fatal mistake of thinking we’d be friends. It never occurred to me that it might rebel.
I’ve never paid much attention to band names: they’re all almost always ridiculous. Cold Chisel, Sex Pistols, The Bonzo Dog Band; each of them makes no sense on their own. For years I had assumed that the name ‘Savage Garden’ was yet another case of a couple of words slapped together without any particular rhyme or reason. A marriage of convenience if you will, not unlike the band itself. But now I know better. In recent weeks I have discovered that there truly is such a thing as a savage garden, and it’s right outside my lounge room window.
The lawn at our house is kind of like a Tale of Two Cities. The front seems never to change. Like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, I am beginning to suspect there’s an ageing portrait of our front garden in an attic somewhere. The grass never seems to grow and it always looks as though it was cut just last week. There was a moment when I began to suspect that it may not be real at all; that we had inadvertently moved into a house that had the astro turf the Brady Bunch rejected as its welcome mat. But after sending a sample down to the lab, I confirmed its organic providence. It’s real, it’s just exceptionally well behaved; something I tell it on a regular basis to reinforce its good conduct.
However, in a tale of two cities, there is always the matter of the second city. Just as the front lawn represents London, the back lawn is undoubtedly Parisian, complete with the distinct whiff of revolution in the air. Trying to keep it under control is a task on par with painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge: you finally get to the end and it’s time to start over. It appears to be growing at an incredible rate. I strongly suspect that it’s using some kind of performance enhancing drug and I have started random testing but, to date, it’s managed to evade detection.
It’s often said that something is as dull as watching grass grow, but these people have never sat on our back verandah. Let me put it this way: the front of our place is Bill Bixby, while the back is the Incredible Hulk. You can return from making a cup of tea and feel decidedly shorter; such is the speed at which the grass has grown. Worse still, the growth is horribly uneven, with pronounced patches of accelerated development that completely betrays where the previous occupants buried the family pets. The entire situation feels mutinous. It’s a state of affairs that cannot be accepted without a fight.
I have mown lawns before. At Tyabb, my father fenced off a vast area and declared that this substantial piece of acreage, the size of which would overshadow several of the smaller European nations, was the front lawn. My siblings and I would take turns in mowing this vast area astride a ride-on lawnmower. I did some of my best daydreaming as I drove that thing up and down rolling hills, shredding into oblivion any stray tennis ball that’d been left lying idly about. But a ride-on lawn mower makes a lot of sense when you’re trying to trim an area the size of Tasmania. It’s harder to justify when the yard is so small, you’d be lucky if you could perform a u-turn. That’s why we went with something more modest.
Mowing is a task that demands special clothes. In my case, it’s a pair of gumboots, khaki pants and an ostentatious straw hat. It’s makes me look like a Broadway hobo. After pulling the ripcord and one of the muscles in my shoulder, the machine burst into life in a puff of smoke. As I cut a swathe through the lawn, I turned and was confronted by a trail of cut grass. I had never felt so… masculine. Duty done, I returned the apparatus to the shed only to emerge to find the lawn was, once more, in an unruly state. Much like Robert Patrick in Terminator 2, it had healed itself. Retreating to the couch, my mood would best be described as ‘forlorn for lawn’. I have always resisted savage garden, both musically and horticulturally. But it was no time for giving up; I vowed to redouble my efforts. For I am the king of the back yard, Lawn of the Rings. As you are my witnesses, my yard will be perfect. Starting next week. Weather and motivation permitting, of course.