My friend John in Cheyenne has a lawn full of weeds. And he doesn’t mind. Deep down, he has some suburban guilt, I’m sure, a yearning for a yard full of lush bluegrass. But he seldom voices it. He’s single, recently retired, and travels often, leaving his cats in my care. I shake my head at his weed patch, underfed and under-watered, and then I go into his house and feed and water his two cats. He loves his pets, but he’s given up on lawns. He mows every couple weeks, just so he won’t get ticketed by the weed police. That’s the extent of his lawn maintenance regimen.
I spend too much time on my lawn. When my wife and I bought this house in 2005, we loved the big backyard. It was November but we could tell that the present owner took care of his place. Mature trimmed trees, thick weed-free grass, and flower beds bedded down for winter. The house was 45 years old but fully renovated with a big kitchen. I loved the new stove, my wife loved the polished wood floors, my daughter loved the basement and its huge bedroom and private entrance and cable-ready TV and big closet.
This is our second summer in the house. We spend as much time in the backyard as we can, since summer is fleeting. We play fetch with the dogs and play bocce ball on weekends. As I cook over my 15-year-old gas grill, I sip my beer, look out on the lawn, and admire my handiwork. I prepped the lawn last September and fertilized it in spring. I enjoyed mowing the first few times but now it’s turned old hat and I’m thinking of drafting my daughter to the task. But it looks great, my patch of green.
The city lets me water my greensward on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, before 9 a.m. and after 5 p.m. I water the old-fashioned way, dragging the house up one side and down the other. My neighbor urges me to get a sprinkler system but I’m cool to the idea. A sprinkler system would take me out of the picture. I might forget the fact that grass takes water and we live in a semi-arid climate. My liberal self takes me to task. "Christ on a crutch, man, don’t you know there’s a drought on?" I do. We’re ten years into a seven-year drought. No end in sight.
And still I water the lawn. I love my patch of grass. It's not really cool to say so, but there you have it.
I have a secret long-range plan. Not so secret, really, because last weekend I pressed my family into service as rock gatherers. We traveled up to southern Wyoming's Laramie Range and collected skull-sized red granite chunks along the roadside. We brought them down to Cheyenne and loaded them into the backyard and made a rock garden. First we had to dig out the weeds and place the big rocks on the bare ground in an artistic way. Then we sprinkled river rocks amongst those and now we have 50 square feet of decorative rock. Add that to the 100 square feet or so already dressed in rock, and I guess that five percent of the yard is now xeriscaped. I plan to add another 50-100 feet before the first snow. Give me five more summers, and half of the yard will not need watering. We’ll keep a swatch of grass big enough for bocce ball, fetch, and dog poop. But that’s it.
As I labor, John and his cats watch me from the picture window. "Poor sucker," they say (and purr). "Doesn’t he know that weeds are the best cure for a big yard?"
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