Mowing the lawn and weeding the garden have never really appealed to me as enjoyable activities. For most of my life, hired gardeners have taken care of those jobs at my house in America. Manicuring the backyard for ascetic appeal was just not on the top of my priority list, and I always found a way to avoid them.
Taking care of your backyard in Chuuk is a little bit different though. Mostly because your backyard is a tropical rain forest. Elephant grass ten feet tall, leaves bigger than a table, and an endless mat of twirling vines that envelop everything they touch. Having a jungle as a backyard and having to maintain its appearance and functionality present an interesting paradox. It takes a lot of work, but the work is a lot of fun.
The water saturated green plants that cover every inch of my island grow at an amazing pace. The combination of abundant rain and constant sunshine provide the perfect team to help plants flourish. Grass grows faster than it can be cut, vines climb higher than we can reach and abandoned buildings get buried in a mound of foliage in a few years.
The jungle is also the source of our livelihood and we depend on it for food. If we allow the grasses, vines and weeds to overtake everything; then our food crops will be denied the nutrients that they need. So the locals are in a constant battle to keep the encroaching jungle at bay.
Luckily, rain forest plants are easy to chop. They are filled with water and can be sliced like butter with a sharp machete. So when the time comes to “mow the lawn”, I usually jump at the opportunity and go nuts with my machete. I go on a samurai rampage and hack the unwanted plants into smithereens. It is a lot more fun that pushing a lawn mower.
No comments:
Post a Comment