Our Lady of Reynolds Wrap

So I was out front sweeping the sidewalk this morning after mowing the lawn. Normally my neighbor, Larry, mows my front lawn (which is blog fodder for another day…), but I guess Larry’s been out of town or busy or something, so I mowed my own lawn today.

Mowing the front lawn, not a big deal, except for the butterfly bush that my neighbor on the other side, Steve, planted on the edge of his lawn. The branches curve down onto my side and make it a little hard to maneuver the mower around. I just go straight by – occasionally one of the branches gets sucked in, but usually they just get pushed out of the way.

Mowing the back lawn is a different story. No matter how hard you try to put the dirt clods back in the same spot after digging trenches in the lawn, you always end up with hills and valleys. I cranked the reel up to its highest level and tried to get some momentum going. It’s a little like off-roading with the electric (with a cord!) mower. Despite the fact that the mower is a Black & Decker “Lawn Hog” (which always makes me think I should be wearing a bandana and a leather vest while mowing the lawn), it acts more like a Lawn Moped -- you know, the kind that you used to be able to pedal after you ran out of gas.

Anyhow, I’d finished the mowing part, and I was cleaning up the sidewalk out front when my neighbor Steve came out. (No, he didn’t say anything about the butterfly bush.) We haven’t seen each other for a while, so we were standing around talking when a procession of about twenty people, mostly Hispanic, came around the corner. They were dressed in a Sunday-going-to-church manner and singing softly as they walked on the sidewalk.

“I wonder if I’m going to catch some flack for the sign,” Steve said as the group got closer. He has a “Vote no on prop 8 – equality for all” sign in his front yard. I told him I’d back him up if things got ugly (which is the funniest part of this whole thing). We moved off the sidewalk to let the procession pass.

The sign didn’t seem to be an issue. The whole crowd kept going without slowing down or even looking at us. About five people had hand-lettered signs that said something about the Virgin Mary in Spanish. One of the teenagers in the back had a massive rosary that appeared to be made out of ¼” rope, with crumpled up 3” diameter balls of aluminum foil for beads. It looked about as classy as you would imagine (and I’m probably going to hell for making fun of it.)

I love Woodland.