yustyoking

            Mom’s lawn service is called MYGG, LLC, an acronym for Make Your Garden Grow. In Swedish, mygg means mosquito. I see similarities. “This is Franklin O’Rourke with MYGG,” the droning voice says on our answering machine. I have never, in 12 years, spoken with him on the phone. He always leaves a message. “We’ll be in your neighborhood to do [check appropriate box] Fall lawn treatment, Winter fertilization, Spring lawn care, Summer spraying.” Either he’s wired our house to see when we’re not home or he makes his calls at 3 a.m. In the Spring, Summer and Fall, he drives me nuts by adding, “Please have your lawn freshly mowed or between mowings.” In the Fall, Franklin adds, “Please rake up and remove all leaves from your lawn, as well as other debris, for our treatment to be most effective.”

            And he gives me the day and date I can expect them.

            We’re getting the treatment, all right. Has Frank ever considered that his proposal might in some way be inconvenient?

            Nope.

            So I have to arrange my life to prepare for the mysterioso visit of MYGG, LLC. Once I actually saw two enormously obese individuals spreading fertilizer pellets with plastic hurdy-gurdies belted to their chests. Once. Otherwise, they and their white truck (“Mommy! I saw it! I saw it! I saw it! ”) come and go as quietly as a soft breeze, leaving behind an odor, 20,000 fertilizer pellets and a yellow invoice in a plastic bag hung on the front door knob of our house.

            They know their stuff, I admit. Our lawn and shrubs are flourishing. I just wish I didn’t need to spend an hour of my time— literally, 60 minutes— meticulously sweeping miniature white and blue crunchy pellets off the front landing, the front walk, the public sidewalk, our paver driveway (hoo-ha!), the back walk, the carport and the basement stairs. Left untouched, these pellets deposit a chemical stain on the pavement. Worse, I can’t stand the crunch, crunch, crunch of tramping on them.

            So I sweep up, cussing a blue streak and wishing MYGG would get a leaf blower and clear my concrete surfaces before spiriting themselves away in their golden (okay, white) chariot.

            In order to get the lawn fertilized, I’m at their beck and call. It’s stressful and I don’t like it. George, across the street, has actually spoken with them. “Utter and total contempt for us all,” he says.

            Come again?

            “I was thinking of using them, until Franklin went into a harangue about how his customers are ‘office matrons too pre-occupied with their own lives to be bothered with fertilizing their own lawns.’ That’s a direct quote.”

            “But… they’re in business!” I protest.

            “Exactly,” says George. “Maybe Franklin wanted to be something else in life. Maybe he’s frustrated. Who knows?”

            I know that my dad Bernie treated his own lawn. “Farmer Brown,” it was a religious experience: The Spring Fertilization. The Fall Treatment. The Winter Service. Best of all, he never had to lift a finger, using the three pickaninnies living on the property— his children— as plantation labor. Band leader, he waved his hands and in a hectoring voice called out, “You lazy jerks! Use the paring knife to slit open the bag. That’s right! Pour the fertilizer into the spreader, you shiftless bums. Kevin, be careful !  Tim, hold the spreader still! Okay, you worthless dolts, roll it out onto the grass— DON’T TOUCH THAT HANDLE! Roll it out onto the grass, you ungrateful clods, before you pull the handle that opens the vent and starts the spreader. Carol… CAROL! Get the rake and walk behind Kevin, raking the grass to more evenly spread the pellets. Gently, Carol, we’re not trying to pull the grass out by its roots! You hopeless ingrates! Tim, what are you standing around for? Get a bucket and wash my car!”

            So there are alternatives to using a lawn care service.

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