4 October 2005 | Vol. 5, No. 3

He just doesn't like the idea of lawn art

by BROOK HOUGLUM

Suddenly you're saying "so… how do you find the irrigation business" as a blender churns tequila and bottles hit a table. You spend the last part of the party in the laundry rubbing salt into wine splotches on your shirt, thinking, even the stone painted like a ladybug, even the slug made of Christmas lights, even rusted bicycle wheels soldered to spikes? This is not party talk about landscape, but leaf blowers in daily rotation in front of the pie shop, door store, fish market. Positions you take (he took a position) to negotiate particular shelves for the colander, paper plates, garlic press, dryer sheets, gin. Your mother artificially inseminates pumpkin blossoms, picks stamens to place near the pistils; the vine now bears three yellow bulbs. If a leaf blower dominoes a row of pink flamingos, who would you suspect? If your irrigation system consists of a bucket, a shovel, a moat, and two bottles of port, do you need to pursue an agricultural degree? Recall the forest kitchen, dark, you camped on needles and drank champagne, points of light stuck in the boughs.