🌾 LITTLE HOUSE ON THE CONDO PRAIRIE

The grass was doing very well.

I went away for a few days.

When I came back the grass was enormous.

This surprised me because we live in a condominium and not on a farm.

I stood there looking at it.

The grass moved gently in the wind.

It was actually quite beautiful if you forgot you were paying condominium fees.

For a moment I thought of Little House on the Prairie.

All we needed was Laura Ingalls running down the hill.

Though she’d have had trouble.

The grass was very high.

🌾 THE GRASS

This year each unit has paid approximately $13,000 to the condominium corporation.

There are many things you can do with $13,000.

Apparently cutting grass isn’t one of them.

I don’t know why.

There may have been difficulties.

Perhaps the lawnmower was broken.

Perhaps the lawnmower was fine but nobody knew where it was.

Perhaps everybody knew where it was but there had to be a meeting before anyone could touch it.

This is a condominium.

You can’t simply start cutting things.

There are rules.

📋 THE BOARD

I wondered whether the board knew about the grass.

It seemed unlikely they could miss it.

You could see only the upper half of some of the smaller shrubs.

Perhaps they were discussing it.

Boards discuss things.

That is why they’re called boards.

If they simply fixed things they’d probably have another name.

I imagined someone saying:

The grass is getting rather long.

Then someone else saying:

We’ll ask management.

This is how things begin.

Management asks the contractor.

The contractor asks someone else.

Someone sends an email.

Someone replies to the email.

Someone is copied on the email.

Someone is accidentally left off the email and has to be added.

Meanwhile, the grass grows.

The grass has no email.

This gives it an advantage.

💰 THIRTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS

I tried not to think about the money.

This is useful when you live in a condominium.

There is insurance.

There are utilities.

There are repairs.

There are professionals.

There are people who advise the professionals.

There are professionals who advise the people advising the professionals.

All of this costs money.

Grass is simpler.

Grass needs sun and rain.

We had both.

This may explain why the grass appeared to be the best-managed part of the property.

🏡 THE PRAIRIE

After a while I became accustomed to it.

Perhaps this was intentional.

Maybe we were returning the property to nature.

This would be progressive.

People pay good money for natural landscaping.

They call it rewilding.

If you call something rewilding, you don’t have to mow it.

You can probably charge extra.

I began imagining the brochure.

A UNIQUE CONDOMINIUM EXPERIENCE

Minutes from Waterloo.

Close to shopping.

Underground parking.

Untouched prairie.

Seasonal wildlife.

Bring long pants.

It sounded quite attractive.

✂️ THE LAWNMOWER

Eventually I wondered about the lawnmower.

There must be one somewhere.

Maybe it was lonely.

Perhaps it sat in a shed remembering better days when people came for it and there was purpose in its life.

Now it waited.

The grass waited too, though more successfully.

I thought of offering to cut it myself.

Then I remembered I had already paid approximately $13,000.

This reduced my enthusiasm.