Marking Our Territory

Our house is on a light-bulb-shaped cul de sac. Not the new kind of light bulb that sort of spirals and takes its sweet time coming on while you wait in the dark, but the old kind that is no longer manufactured in America and that soon people will be buying on the black market. Our cul de sac is shaped like that because it was designed in the 1950's. If it had been designed in this century, it would take you a lot longer to get to our house.

As you approach, you drive through the stem of the light bulb into the bulbous part, and you will find our house approximately where the light bulb would say "60 WATTS." (Incidentally, did the word "bulbous" get invented to mean something that is shaped like a light bulb, or is a light bulb called a light bulb because it is bulbous? I might have to look that up.*)

Our house is up a 45 degree driveway, so high up that all the other houses in the neighborhood look like, well, like they’re slightly lower than ours. At the foot of the hill is a fairly large, flat grassy area that borders our section of the light bulb.

It was into this border that we found ourselves pounding fiberglass poles, mostly because the guy who mows our lawn told us to. When we were done, we had around our property what very well might be the world’s most pathetic fence. It was just like a white picket fence, except not white, and with only the pickets (assuming the pickets are the upright part of the fence–I might have to look that up, too**), and extremely scrawny ones at that, and spaced very far apart, and leaning in all different directions. (You have to look very hard at the picture to see them; think Where’s Waldo?, only skinnier.)

Some of the poles are marginally fluorescent yellow and some are mildly fluorescent orange. There is no pattern to their placement. The truth it, it looks less like a fence and more like some archers got high and shot day-glo arrows randomly onto our lawn.

The idea, the lawn guy says, is so snow plows will know where the grass starts when there is snow on the ground, and not plow up our grass so that we would have to pay our lawn guy to replace it.

I’m not sure how this works, though. I mean the plow might stop if the driver sees the markers, but the driver won’t be able to see the markers, because they will have been knocked over by the growing pile of snow ahead of the plow. And, anyway, the plow driver isn’t exactly disincentivized to stop the plow before he gets to our grass, because guess who has been contracted to provide snow removal service. That’s right–the lawn guy!

I wouldn’t be surprised if the lawn guy also owns a fluorescent pole manufacturing company.

I’m also kind of happy it hasn’t snowed much this winter.

*I’m never going to look that up.  **Nor this.

For more on our adventures as first-time homeowners at age 57, and moving to Stamford, visit http://theupsizers.wordpress.com/