Hi, Terry.
I don’t know about lawns on the fore deck... Id worry about the trim.
In a similar vein:
Another maintenance–based story.
A sailing club member, now deceased, was notorious for never actually sailing. I mean NEVER. Not even on the sunniest of summer weekends! He did, however, support every social event and many of the season’s races – usually from the bar - and paid his dues on the dot each year. His boat, a large, glass fibre day boat of unknown origin, had lost its cover (if it ever had one) years ago and consequently had filled with rainwater. It was not the only neglected boat, it must be said, and as it was in a distant corner of the dinghy park few people took much notice. However, it had quite an ecosystem going on in there after a while, what with the dead leaves rotting away and all. The boat owner, when asked, claimed that it only needed 5 minutes with a pressure washer to bring it up to scratch. One of the joys of maintenance-free glassfibre for aging sailors was that you didn’t have to spend every week end with a pot of varnish in hand and a little drop of water inside was not a problem. The site manager, wishing to make a point, chucked in a handful of Canadian Pond weed – the curse of all reservoir sailors – into the mess and raised the matter with the committee, claiming it was an eye-sore, blot on the landscape, etc. etc., only to be informed that, according to the club rules, the guy was entitled to keep his boat in its designated space so long as it was paid for. What he did with it, sailing or not sailing, was his own affair and as he wasn’t breaking any other rules that they could tell (and was, incidentally, adding considerably to the social life of the club - and the Bar profits) they didn’t propose to do anything about it.
Predictably, this did not please the site manager at all and he took to complaining about the “eyesore” to anyone prepared to listen and quite a few who weren’t. It would appear that one or more of the latter were founder members of the Guerrilla Gardening movement as one morning a water lily, in full flower, was noticed in the offending boat. This caused much hilarity in the club bar, mostly at the site managers expense. (No one had ever criticised the boat’s owner , he was a popular guy and at this time was hospitalised with what turned out to be his last illness.) The next week some bedding plants surrounded the terminally perished trailer tyres and, week by week, more arrived until the whole pitch looked like an entry to the Chelsea Flower Show. Finally, the piece de résistance , a pair of gold fish were seen sheltering peacefully under the lily pads and a sign, stolen locally, proclaiming the site to be the winner of the English Heritage “Best Kept Village” award.
Unfortunately, not all stories have a happy ending and I have reached the point where this one is best left alone. Suffice to say that the goldfish were none the worse for the experience but had to be found alternative accommodation in the fullness of time.
