The Texan and the Gardener
The man sitting astride the tall, well groomed black stallion, its croup and quarters gleaming, said with a long Texas drawl, “why’d you cut your grass so much? Yo’always seem to be cutting your grass. Is it necessary?” Thomas Dalton, a tall, strong, wispy man, his forearms sinewy like an old gnarled, twisted oak looked up from his push mower with a whimsical expression stencilled on his strongly structured features and replied, “it’s a strange thing you know. When I casually run my lawn mower over this stretch of turf it gets shorter as is witnessed by the deposit in the collection contraption.” The Texan, looking every bit the western cowboy, was at shoulder height above the high Purbeck stone wall that fronted Thomas’s garden. A pristine white Stetson with silver band was pulled down shading his eyes from the blazing noon sun partially obscuring his face but Thomas could see the large Roman nose sitting in the centre of an impressive bone structure giving the sus