The landscapers shudder when they see me. Each time they step into my yard, color drains from their faces. They argue with each other, shake their heads, pound their fists, point at the house, each hoping to not draw the shortest straw. The loser hangs his head in defeat and tries to avoid making eye contact with me, who is usually staring out the office window that faces the front yard.
I try to smile and be sincerely friendly, but there is a training, the kind to help them understand the barrier that exists between them and me. The invisible line that is drawn between my mulched garden beds and the lawn, the lawn they mow and fertilize. They don’t understand the flowers as I do. They don’t realize that if it looks like a weed, it probably isn’t, and that in the moment I see a hand reach for the stems ready to yank, I barrage through the door screaming: “Nooooooo!”
The team manager knocks on my door one morning and asks me to decipher my note I had left taped to the front. “My guys, they don’t understand it, and they were afraid to touch anything.”
I scratch my head as he holds out the note, all nine pages. “I tried to be as detailed and explicit as possible. What part didn’t they understand?”
“The explicit detail. Look, maybe you could just point everything out to me, and I’ll tell them what you want and don’t want.”
That was reasonable. I proceed to give him the garden tour, pointing out which bushes are okay to trim, which are not, where it is fine to step, where they should not. I share the process of my choosing the flowers, what my plantings would be as the summer approached, and why I selected specific colors to create the color rooms. He is attentive and smiles. After about 30 minutes, he turns to his team following at a distance, utters two sentences in Spanish, points, and off they go. Either he gave them the Cliff Notes of our conversation, or he left out a lot of details.
When they leave, the air smells of freshly cut grass. I inhale deeply. There is something calming about the smell of dirt and grass, if one does not have any allergies. I can always tell when it’s allergy season, because my husband talks to me as though he is nursing a cold. His eyes are watery and red, and he snorts through several boxes of tissues that has me convinced we are keeping the company in business. “Ow wuff your day?” he asks, then sneezes uncontrollably.
“Fine,” I respond. “The landscapers were here.”
He rolls his eyes. “Oh no.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Ow were they when they left?”
“Just fine. They had the garden tour. I explained the difference between the coreopsis stems and the weeds. You know, my wildflowers look like weeds until they bloom. I can’t have the landscapers pulling my flowers like madmen. It would ruin my wild garden look.”
“The wild look you haf down. It explains why the lawn looks weedy.”
“I am contributing to the environmental health by allowing the pollinating bees and butterflies to have food. Besides, the neighbors love our yard. It’s all they talk about. I see them pointing all the time.”
My husband shakes his head and sneezes. “They’re talking about it because it doesn’t match the rest of the neighborhood. The HOA is calling me to get rid of our field.”
“You’re exaggerating. How can it be a field if it’s full of flowers and butterflies?”
A strange noise draws us to the window. A cow is chomping my flowers.
—Emma Kathryn Harris
Emma Kathryn Harris is a poet, essayist, fiction writer, copywriter for corporations and nonprofits, and writing consultant residing in Western North Carolina. She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. When she’s not writing, she’s photographing her garden flowers and catching insects doing something interesting, like a praying mantis lunching on a bumblebee. In her spare time, she acts as a housewife where she draws her humorous inspiration from everyday not-so-mundane activities. Find her at emmakathrynharris.com or on Instagram @emmakathrynharris.