reply to Verlyn Klinkenborg's Lawn Care Anonmyous

Dear Mr. Klinkenborg

Although, I am from California, I don't really understand the summertime enormous push for a velvet like green lawn. Like you, I grew up seeing a certain landscape over and over and over again. I have a number of shoulds built into my lawn thinking. They include the allowable length of grass before mowing and the need for immediate action against dry spots or weeds.

The lawn even seems to say; you may approach me but use the path. Walking on such beauty seems as bad as talking out loud at the library. I walk across my lawn every day even as I acknowledge feeling a bit ridiculous about how rebellious I feel as I do it.

Almost everyone has a lawn here. Once, we had a neighbor who transformed their entire outside space into a garden of plants with very little lawn. They were included in a city wide garden walking tour for a few years. Then, they moved.  The new owners immediately tilled the plants and planted more grass seed. They considered a lawn, I heard from other neighbors, as easier to maintain than a garden. Which doesn't seem entirely true to me. Most of the plants around my house require very little care. Much less care than the weekly mowing chore.

I do agree with you about mowing. My neighbors and varied members of my own family mow at regular intervals, counting such activity as both doing something outside and exercise. The nice looking lawn is a reward for a working half hour or so pushing a noisy, heavy mower.

Maybe spending a good portion of my life in the suburbs has contributed to my changed opinion of the green squares bordering our houses. Or maybe living next to a forest of irregularly spaced Maples and Oaks, with Ash and other trees is the reason for my change in thinking.

Which brings me to the opinion you may already have guessed. I would like to see less green squares. I would like to have neighbors who do different things; from no grass/ plants only to a rock garden. Maybe that impulse is stronger because I have given in personally. My husband loves the green lawn. He loves caring for it. He feels personal pride when the lawn is green, mowed perfectly and weed free. Such are the compromises of marriage. I would love to till up the whole thing; plant wildflowers and Hostas.

You admit having no neighbors to care about having a lawn. I admit having neighbors who probably would, and with the compromise of marriage added in, tilt the decision away from my preferences. Sometimes, I think of the lawn as one way us suburbanites get to have a peice of nature or even, get to control our environment in this age of lost jobs and homes. Sometimes, I think of the lawn as a place where we live the American dream as I watch children run and play on it.

Ultimately, your feelings of doing something wrong by not mowing your lawn, allowing it to go back to wild mint and long grasses will fade. You may learn to enjoy the wildness of long grasses. But I will let you know the only peice of lawn liking I have left. The first time my bare feet touch grass, after the snow has gone away, is one way I know Summer or depending on the year, late Spring is really here. I hope you keep getting that moment.