The older I get the smarter I become. OK, wise-guy, yeah you in the back, what’s so funny……. Anyway, I grew up in Philadelphia, in a row home that featured concrete for a yard. Now concrete isn’t pretty to look at but needed maintenance is low and as a kid I just about never heard “Joseph, mow the lawn”!!!
I have owned several homes in my decades on this planet in various areas of Pennsylvania. Almost all of them have featured green lawns full of grass, crab grass and some green looking plant material I never bothered correctly identifying. Truth be told, if it was green, I mowed it and pretty much left it up to Mother Nature to handle any other needs the lawn required. Mowing as an activity for me wasn’t so much beautifying my landscape as much as it was a way to reward myself with a cold beer or glass of ice tea when the deed was accomplished.
Recently I embarked on a walking program in an attempt to get into better shape and increase my heart’s ability to stay beating and therefore keep me on the right side of the ground. Anyway, as I drive (once in a while I walk but darn-it exercise is dangerous) thru my development I notice my neighbors also have lawns and I can tell quite a bit about each neighbor just from their landscaping. Some neighbors have neatly manicured grass with a variety of pretty flowers planted thru out their landscaping. Cute, pleasant to look at but too work intensive for this old man. Besides, the amount of beer I would need to drink on hot, humid days while manicuring and weeding that color filled landscape would probably cost me a lot of money. Too much of an investment of time and money for my liking. Since some of my neighbors are retired, I guess the beautiful lawns and landscaped yards probably belong to people with lots of time on their hands and a little OCD impulse to feed.
Other lawns more closely resemble my patch of greenery. A mixture of green grass, green weeds and green UGPs (unidentified green plants) that need mowing but not much else as far as maintenance. I do occasionally weed whack a few rebellious vegetative plants that dare reach too high. But on the whole, mowing is my main maintenance activity. Not so coincidentally the neighbors with lawns like mine are all working stiffs who haven’t retired yet and therefore don’t have the time to make their yards look like a golf course fairway.
What is it about lawns anyway? Why the popularity? I recently read where lawns started out as a status symbol. Rich people had luscious green lawns filled with beautiful landscaping and of course working stiffs decided they wanted to mimic these landscaping elites. OK, I guess there ain’t nothing wrong with that except those rich landscaped lawns were kept professionally manicured by gardeners and not the rich people who owned those lawns. Good plan poor execution. If you have to actually work for a living, taking care of lawn and landscape is a pain in the tochus (Philly word for butt). I guess the moral of the story is being jealous does no-one any good.
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