My Blog

The Lawn

When I was 11 years old growing up in New Mexico we had a yard full of sand and rocks. I became friends with two sisters who were in the habit of growing plants where ever they lived so I followed them in this pursuit by watering some thing that was growing in our front yard. It turned out to be tumbleweed and the disloyal thing dried up and rolled away after a a few weeks of faithful watering on my part.

Undaunted by my initial failure I tried to grow a lawn and a row of Zinnias in the front yard.  It seemed normal to want a lawn since every other family on the block had one except for one or two brown-dirt house fronts where the poor folk lived. And then there was my mom and I. We seemed to be outside of the normal class categories. Mom was an intellectual, a composer so worrying about appearances was beneath her.

My Mother is a history buff so as I nurtured and watered my little plot of grass seeds mom explained to me that these little plots of grass we saw in front of every house oar apartment complex where a vestige of the English gentry; symbolizing disposable wealth.

Mom stood on the creaking porch and lectured as I weeded and watered: “Having a lawn is a luxury that means you are of a class that can actually waste land on something other than growing food or grazing sheep. Throughout most of agricultural history what ever land a family was lucky enough to have was used to graze animals and grow crops of food to sell for cash and for eating.” Mom paced back and forth on the bleached, rotting boards as she got into it.

“So having acres and acres of freshly cut lawn and doing nothing with it proved one was rich enough to have so much extra land one could intimidate visitors with a leisurely drive from the front gate to the mansion. The lawn was a statement of indolence and wealth beyond anything most people could afford. “

Mom plonked down the aging steps and gave a seedling a little thrust with her fuzzy slippered foot, for emphasis, and continued her tirade…

“This custom of growing a lawn of inedible grass was brought to the new world by the English merchants and continues to be a symbol of status. If ones lawn looks a little shabby what will the neighbors think?” Here mom made a mock look of angst and put one hand to her heart with a little theatrical gasp. Then she went back inside and started plonking on the piano again, working on her latest orchestral piece. My mother did not care what the neighbors thought and made it a point that every one should know she was so intellectually superior that she had no need to keep up with the Jones.

My lawn did not look anything like the neighbors thick green lawns because I did not know anything about soil or fertilizer or that I should add compost or rock dust or add other nutrients so it was amazing that anything at all grew in the sandy stony soil.  Eventually I gave up on the thin little lawn that looked like it was prematurely balding no matter how much I watered it.

My friends had better luck in their yard across the street. They began growing a garden of vegetables, which they watered methodically morning and evening when it was not too hot and so that the direct sun would not boil the wet plants.  The plants quickly grew so tall that you could barely see the girls as the weeded and watered.

I abandoned the front yard and started a garden in the back near a faucet so the short hose I had found in the basement would reach. It was amazing how easily plants sprang up in the rocky sandy soil. I had carrots, potatoes, lettuce and zucchini in a few short weeks just from adding seeds and water and a little manure! The crops tasted a little bitter because I had done little to prepare the soil but to this day I am amazed at how much food can be grown on a piece of ground the size of a large dining room table.

I heard the window creak open and Mom leaned out and looked at my little garden one day. Nodding sagely, she began another lecture…

“When I was a kid growing up during the depression we had what was known as ‘victory gardens’. Every vacant lot and yard was filled with vegetables because we could not afford gas or coal to move food ridiculous distances the way growers do now a’ days. We had truck farms ringing the outskirts of Chicago where I grew up as a kid.

“All the food was locally grown. I used to have to help my mom can zillions of jars of fruits and vegetables every fall. That’s what we need to do now is grow locally!” Mom noshed on the carrot I had washed for her and tromped back to the living room to plonk on the piano.

When I drive around these days, and see lawns and median strips and ornamental plants on campuses, and business and everywhere I go I fantasize that they are gardens and fruit trees. All the palm trees turn into date palms and coconut palms in my mind. All the ornamental maples and flowering shrubs turn into peach trees, and berry bushes. The illegal gardeners who now tend all these inedible plants are gathering baskets of yummy nourishing organic foods for everyone, including themselves, to eat for free. The grocery stores and shopping malls go out of business and everyone goes vegan. We turn them into cooperatives and green houses with big sweeping skylights for the tropical fruit trees we grow there during the winter and share in distributing the foods we grow in our gardens.

Recently I have been looking at permaculture sites. There are whole university programs on growing local food and pretty much just doing things sensibly for a change, how to build things without wasting water, heat and air conditioners, how to put things where they are accessible, for instance growing food locally so you can eat it fresh.

You can get a degree in how to grow food with a minimum of replanting and weeding and tilling and laboring.  You can get a degree in how to catch and save water and reuse gray water, How to reuse everything so nothing is wasted, composting, using solar power. windmills and more. Common sense has become a science. Basically we have to go back and relearn the things that people did naturally a couple of hundred years ago.