Honey...where's the dog?

So this isn't as much an account of my health regiment as it is a confession of my failure to maintain a good yard. After our baby was born, I've had trouble finding the time to do the little things...like say mowing.

Last week I cranked up the mower for the first time in almost two months. Did I mention that this is Texas, and it is summer? It turns out, grass (and lots and lots of weeds) apparently grows pretty quickly round here. The front yard was a real chore, with some patches approaching 5 or 6 inches. The backyard, though...the backyard was something else.

Do you remember the film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids? Our backyard looked a lot like that one, only we hadn't been reduced to Lilliputians by a failed scientific breakthrough run amok by a stray baseball. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that areas of the yard were well over a foot in height. At play, my dog looked like one of those lions on the Discovery Channel, surveying a a herd of gazelles, looking for the tiny one with a limp.

So it was that last week, after lunging and grunting my poor mower through the front yard, I moved on to this Herculean task. I worked it, too. I was back there, huffing and puffing, for more than an hour. That's when God decided to give me a break by opening up a raincloud. I had conquered all but a small patch of about ten feet by 15 feet. Not too bad, right?

Last night after work, I decided it was time to re-mow the yard. This time the front yard was child's play. It turns out, if you're responsible about maintaining the grass, the mower will slide over it like butter on a roll.

Most of backyard went by in a flash, as well. That small patch, though, was a regular nightmare. It looked like the weed patch that Godzilla must have been napping in during the nuclear explosion. Some of the weeds were definitely over two feet tall, and the grass itself was densely packed. Every inch of mowing was a struggle. I had to make two passes, like one of those newfangled razor blades with extra blades.

When all was said and done, I had a respectable yard (minus the occasional haystack), and a lower body that felt as those it had been through a pretty intense workout. If I had been holding a 40 pound medicine ball and doing lunges across a park, my back and legs would have been less sore.

There are two lessons here. One, everyday chores like lawn work can provide great workout opportunities. Two, mow your dang yard if you don't want it to look like a scene from the Congo.