The Lawn Looks Lenten, But Easter Will Come

How many words do you know that have one “u” right after the other?

And if you do know one, do you also know how to pronounce it?

My husband, who regularly passes along interesting tidbits of knowledge to me, taught me the term “Easter Triduum” just the other day, when he was pondering the plethora of sermons he needed to present over the three days we’re in right now.

Needless to say, Easter itself has come around plenty of times since we’ve been married, but for some reason, he hasn’t seen fit to use the other part of the term before…or maybe, and there’s a good possibility of this, I didn’t fully hear it while I was putting away laundry or sizzling something on the stove. In any case, I bid him farewell this afternoon because he was heading off to one particular New Hampshire town for the next couple of nights; I will see him next in the wee hours of Easter morning, if I have the schedule right.

Meanwhile, along with inching forward in my own book revising work (must include some cutting but no redacting), I plan to take a little time to appreciate how our front lawn has taken a kind of stick-in-the-mud approach to the first month of spring, flouting all suggestions that it really is time to get dressed up nicely for Easter

Here’s how one lawn looks on a piece of mail from Blue Seal we got recently, one promoting all the different kinds of grass seed we can buy:

,And here’s how our front patch of “lawn,” the one most visible to passers-by, looks:

In a way, it’s embarrassing. Is this the best we can offer people who live further down our street, when they’re coming home after a long day’s work, wanting to glance up and take in some respite? On the other hand, I prefer to think of our soggy, drab-looking patch as just clinging to many of the elements of Lent. “See here!” it says, “I am the result of a slog of a winter, one that delivered nasty weather before you could rake all the swirling leaves. Admit it, your bludgeoned soul often feels the way I look. I’m not interested in pretending to be something I’m not just because it’s April.”

It’s true. Still-standing puddles lurk way inside my being, some clogged with organic matter which can go beyond clumpy to take on a dark and sinister look. The whole mess doesn’t evaporate quickly on its own.

In spurts over the past week, my husband and I were out there with metal rakes — the equivalent of fine point pens – digging in to the patches of sludge to make piles of yucky stuff that, months ago, must have been leaves on our trees. The lifting up of the piles into the wheelbarrow was the most sensual activity, leaving stains on my gloves and dribbles of murky matter all down my bright pink running shirt. My husband always prefers to work in silence, so this was a kind of meditative time for us. I wish I’d stayed out longer actually, instead of going inside to cook dinner and eventually needing to call him in to eat.  He has an enormous capacity to keep on a repetitive task for hours. But now that I think on it, I bet he was making progress on those sermons all the while.

Afterwards, I checked out what the UNH Extension had to say on the somewhat controversial subject of post-winter cleanup and found this slightly ominous sentence in a blog post:

While you can certainly wait until spring to rake up the leaves, be prepared to deal with other resulting yard and garden issues that may become apparent at that time.

In other words, you’ll be out there for a while, and most likely not whistling as you work. You’ll need to dig in those prongs, first of all. And probably you already know about “snow mold” – a fungus that does a nasty number on the grass. In the Lenten category, definitely: looks like death, might eventually turn around into life. Tulips blooming? Don’t expect to see those.

So when exactly do we get out of this swamp requiring daily boot-wearing and into the clear, dry radiance of Easter with its exciting possibilities of high-heels and sunglasses? There’s rain and wind in the forecast for this weekend. While members of our family sit together in the pew on Sunday morning, listening to Rob preach just a few yards away for a change, I won’t yearn for a better lawn or a better anything but instead will recall how alive I actually felt while picking up those sludgy piles. The pastel-colored flowers will come in their own time; at the store, they look a little crowded together and overwhelming in their brightness. Maybe my yard will produce a gentler version, soon enough.