STAYING ALIVE

If there's any doubt about the importance of the lawns in the minds of those who live here, they'll likely be removed with each encounter, however brief. Some of the residents speak about the abilities of my predecessors as if they're comparing the technique of their favorite tennis players. And yet the qualities of my immediate predecessor, it soon becomes clear, shall not be too difficult to surpass. Apparently, rather than regularly attend to the grounds, he preferred the more solitary pursuit of weightlifting in the privacy of the garden shed. This, no doubt, goes to explain the presence of a full length mirror leaning up against one of the walls, as well as an abandoned dumbbell bar, and a small tube of oil that features the imprint of an overly developed headless torso. Rather than have time on his hands, my predecessor, it seems, had weights in them. Perhaps the proximity of so many near the end of their lives reminded my unknown gardening brother of his own mortality, likely encouraging him all the more to push on harder through another set of repetitions, maybe even with some added weight. Either that, or he was merely vain.