Nature be damned.

I bought a lawnmower. When I first moved into my new house, I bought a lawnmower. Because I have little money, I decided to get one of those non-gas, non-electric manual push-mowers. Think 1950's styled machine. The sort of mower my old Jewish grandfather would have pushed if he hadn't been an immigrant peddler living in a rundown tenement in the Bronx.

I pretend to be all environmentally conscious. "It's green. It's good for the earth." Truth is, I only bought it because it was less expensive and I didn't want to have to fuss with gas cans or worry about running over an extension cord. But I hate the damned thing. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Hate it.

First off, it doesn't do a good job. It doesn't cut the multitude of weeds that sprout up on my lawn. Once I've finished mowing, my backyard looks like the face of a pubescent boy who just learned to shave, with hairy little tufts appearing hither and yon. Every now and then, it just stops. The wheels stop spinning and I have to hit and butt the thing to get it going again.

Be that as it may, it's not the mower I hate the most. It's my pear tree.

Oh but how can you hate a pear tree? I can hear the collective gasp from my faithful readers already. Hate a pear tree?? And we were under the misconception that what with your manual mower you were green and earth-friendly! Hate a pear tree... ::mumble mumble::

Judge me if you will. But I hate my pear tree, my not-hurting-anyone, kind-to-all-human-beings iteration-of-The-Giving-Tree, my shade-providing-affection-seeking pear tree. I hate it. And here's why:

Yesterday afternoon I decided that instead of writing motions that were due today, I would mow my lawn. Nothing like home improvement to put off doing real work. So I went outside. And what did I see on the ground? Pears all over the place. With bugs aloft each one. Fruit flies, bumblebees, yellow jackets, gnats, mosquitoes, and big-ole-regular-nasty-disease-carrying black flies. Each piece of fruit had an infestation of insects crawling about. So what did I do? I got the hose. Wait. That's not entirely true. I spent a good deal of time untangling the hose.

With the hose, I shot the bugs off. I picked up each mushy, rotten piece of sour fruit (I know; I tasted a pear from that tree once) and threw it in a trash bag. After an hour, the fruit was picked up. But the lawn was wet. So I put off the mowing until this afternoon.

I got home from work, threw on my shorts, a tank top and my pink 'Roos. I went out in the backyard. And what was I greeted with? More fallen fruit than yesterday. With at least thrice as many insects. Learning my lesson from yesterday, I darted about picking up the pieces that the vultures hadn't gotten to. The really bug-ridden pears I left on the ground. And proceeded to mow the lawn.

I saved the pear-tree-area until the end. I attempted to mow around it. One particularly irate bee followed me and stung my ankle. So I gave up.

What do I have now? A patchy mess of nature. The rest of the lawn looks like crap anyway -- like the aforementioned face of 13-year-old boy who can't shave to save his life. And a huge circle of grass around the tree is uncut. Just sitting there, gather more rotten fruit and more oh-so-happy and sated bugs.

Totally discouraged, I decided to save the front yard until tomorrow. I'm drenched in sweat, have a welt on my ankle, and my seasonal allergies are running amok. I have work to do, but I'm taking a shower before I do anything else. Maybe that'll put me in a better and more earth friendly mood.

But right now? I hate nature.