This is a funny coincidental post because when I posted this 11 years ago I had moved 6 months earlier, and now, synchronicity, I’m about 6 months out from having moved again.
(5/31/06) Some of my long time blogging friends may remember that I moved about 6 months ago. I live in a nice suburban neighborhood with identical houses and identical yards as far as the eye can see. The electric and phone lines are buried underground so as not to spoil the picturesque view with ugly poles and wires. Every morning when it’s quiet and the streets are empty I look out my window to see the sun rise over “my” neighborhood. As I take in this view I feel like the king of suburbia. It’s perfect. A little too perfect. In the evening couples walk their dogs and greet each other cheerily. Joggers and roller bladers cruise the streets looking healthy and wholesome. Kids play street hockey and skateboard. If a Hollywood director wanted to cast a neighborhood to play the picture-perfect, average American neighborhood, my neighborhood would be a shoo-in for the part. There’s just one problem. Everyone else’s lawn.
As far as I can tell, every other homeowner in my neighborhood is psychotic about their lawn care. I have no idea how anyone with a full-time job can devote as much time to landscaping and grooming their lawns as the people do. The thing is, I don’t even see them doing it. It’s like they’ve got Edward Scissorhands living in their homes and he only comes out at night. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no slacker. I mow my lawn often enough that if I parked my car in the yard I could still find it the next day. I once owned a pool table whose surface wasn’t as smooth as these people’s yards. And it’s not just the grass. It’s the little scenic settings they create. Little benches in a tiny grove of trees in the corner of the yard. A rustic wheelbarrow with flowers growing out of it just so. Not a tree or bush is without perfect little border blocks surrounding it. It’s like I’m living in The Stepford Neighborhood. Talk about peer pressure! I’m afraid that if I skip mowing my lawn one week they’ll form a lynch mob and storm my suburban castle with torches and pitchforks, being careful not to step on any landscaping on the way over. I refuse to cave into this peer pressure to meet their insane standards of lawn care. I do have a plan though. You knew I would didn’t you?
I’m going to buy lawn fertilizer. Lots of it. No, not for my yard you idiot! For theirs! At night while my neighbors sleep, exhausted from another day of landscaping, I’ll be out there fertilizing their lawns, causing them to grow at an astronomical rate. Their lawns will be like those Play-Doh people where you can see the hair growing right out their heads. There will be no way they can keep up! And I’ll be planting weeds everywhere, even if I have to pollinate them myself. I’ll have the best yard in the neighborhood within a week! (pause for maniacal laughter) This should work perfectly, unless Edward Scissorhands catches me.
Have a great Thursday! ~Phil
this made me laugh and laugh!!!!
Good. Thank you!
ah…thank you, Phil…
I am so rubbish at mowing my lawn. We have a teeny garden, so I have to use a strimmer rather than a proper mower…but I always seem to slip and leave bald patches.
If your neighbours saw it they wouldn’t let me live anywhere near you!!
I heard recently that grass uses more water than any other crop in the US. Could that really be true? Do people care about their lawns that much?
Yes, I believe that’s probably true
I have felt that way at times just with my balcony and the two on either side of me! I just want a big comfy chair to sit out on and they have mini gardens and rod iron tables.
So you had balcony envy?
There’s a neighborhood here just like that. All the lawns are perfect and some of them appear to be mowed in some sort of sociopathic grid pattern. It scares me.
OK, after a while I admit I did start mowing my lawn and a sociopathic grid pattern. What was in the Saralee a grid, I would just two different parents each week so I wouldn’t get bored
But now I’ve moved away from the neighborhood and I can slack off.
Made me laugh. On the weekend if we hear the sound of a lawn mower firing up, my husband will often go quiet, listen, and then curse before saying I think that is [next door neighbor’s name] – now I’m going to have to mow [insert more cursing]
Exactly! It’s like an unspoken competition among men. We can let our yard look worse than those around us or it would impugn our manliness
I know for a fact that the guy across the street pays a team to get his whole yard done in 15 minutes flat. Only because I’ve been lucky enough to look up and catch them in the act a couple of times. For the rest of my neighbors? No clue. But one of them offered to come help me with my yard, which I think was her way of telling me they’re about to stage an intervention.
LOL about the intervention! I wish I could afford to have landscapers come and take care of my yard every week.
I would love to see the looks on their faces if Edward Scissorhands came out and mowed YOUR lawn. They may stop mowing their lawns as frequently after that, you know, because they would be terrified to go back outside. Total win for you! Too bad he isn’t real. Sigh. Good luck with the lawn fertilizer, Phil! HA!
LMAO. Great post. Did you ever fertilize their lawns?