Mowing

  When I started photographing one of my favorite subjects was the uncultivated flora, (read:briar and  brush) of the Smith County watersheds.  The fields and farms of an earlier agricultural economy had been abandoned and you could watch fallow fields fill up with tall weeds, saplings, pioneering pines and then hardwoods striving upwards for the light.  It is a very non-human directed energy.  The plants sort themselves out in some sort of pecking order and go about their lives with a competitive energy that is really something to see over a decade or two.  To me it was like watching the mind of God at work while I hunted a place to set my tripod.

 In the cool of this morning I mowed the last corner of yesterdays lawnwork here at the house.  I'm an old hand now at watching weeds and vines try to edge their way in, and largely sympathetic, though I do have to keep a neat yard just so we can get to the cars.  The robins love the new cut grass and hunt behind the mower.  They are nearly domesticated in town- about as wild as chickens, standing around waiting me to strip off the grass.

  It's a job that never ends.  I mow the house in town, then load up the mower and head for the lake.  I mow the lake yard and burn limbs and twigs, then cycle back to town.

  It's one of those unending useless activities that never gets done.  I feel like a monkey that has been handed a coconut.  I can't get in but I can't put it down either.

  So I cut strips while the robins wait and try and meditate on the mind of God.  I hope he's mindful of his idiot servants.