Let’s just call it Agrarianism. You don’t know what that is, right?

First yard work day of the season. I’m impressed — that I’m not dead.

A big shout-out to my Craftsman 6.0 mower that started on the first try. It’s been twenty years and you’re as reliable as you were our first spring together! (I’m not sure what my sincerity/sarcasm ratio is here.)

I missed our anniversary, beeteedubs. I don’t know the exact date (without going through the drawer of appliance warranties and manuals). I know it was March 2002, during either high school Sweet 16 (men’s) or NCAA basketball tourney. Because all of the salesmen at Sears were too busy watching a game on the big screens to fool with answering some woman’s questions about lawnmowers. Except for the one young guy who didn’t work in lawn & garden but did have college loans to pay. He would have done anything, said anything to sell me a mower. As I learned the next spring when I took my mower to the Sears repair center for its annual oil change and, according to the staff there, the extended warranty covered pretty much nothing. So they also lied, mostly to deflect from keeping my mower for a month, telling me it was done when they hadn’t actually done anything, keeping it another couple of weeks, telling me it was done then trying to give me someone else’s mower, and taking another week to find my mower (it was the one with my incomplete service order zip tied to the handle).

I’m sure the salesman was long gone by then. The Sears service center closed not long after. Oh it tried to hang on under a different name & management, but it was completely gone within another year.

Sears, you were fine when you were basic. You knew it, we knew it. You rocked basic. Only K-Mart could rival you at basic. But you decided, hey, I’m in a mall, same as Macy’s and Dillards. I can do anything they can do, like you were plucky star in a 1930’s musical. No, Sears, no you couldn’t. Neither could K-Mart. Buh-bye.

That’s my pollen-addled thoughts on my official first day of spring (aka my first mow of the new year). There will be more yard work this weekend, weather permitting, so check back for more homespun words of truth and wisdom.

I probably won’t ramble about long-defunct discount chains puttin’ on airs. But you never know.

p.s. Why the h*ll is there no Powerade in this house?!

p.p.s. I’m callin’ it. It’s spring. I’m turning on the (last working) ceiling fan and turning off the heat.

p.p.p.s. I knew it would be awful humid today, but I was willing to be proven wrong.

p.p Oh whatever. I feel like I need to clarify in case anyone familiar with real agrarianism (I love that autocorrect wants to make that “agrarian isn’t” ok, you caught me autocorrect) wanders by. And is still reading four- five- ten p.s.s in. Wow, you are open-minded and really willing to give people a chance.

Lawn mowing isn’t agrarianism. Even autocorrect knows it, and we all know autocorrect isn’t the sharpest bulb in the shack. But lawn mowing isn’t un-agrarianism (anti-agrarianism?) either. Plant native grasses. Don’t use man-made chemical fertilizers and herbicides and insect repellents. Let the native clovers and wildflowers* roam free, attracting bees and butterflies, birds and moths. Don’t get caught in the water-weed-mow cycle. Native plants can withstand whatever crazyass weather happens, they can survive from one year to the next without constant babying. Let the roots spread out seeking water. Don’t force-feed your lawn to ultra-lushness and you won’t have to mow every week — and the grass will actually be healthier.

*This does not include ragweed. Ragweed is the devil’s weed. I know that’s what people in the 50s called marij, but they were deluded fools if they believed any plant was more devilishly insidious than ragweed.