Lovin' Sisses Yard More Than she

YOU COULD PUT MY HOUSE inside my sister's house, but, hey, I'm happy. Who needs forty five hundred square feet? And I would rather mow my yard than hers, although mine aint nothin' to sneeze at. April here in mid America is the time of the awakening yard, with weeds first out of the ground, freaking most people out, inspriing them to get the mower out and start working on that grass. Oh, how we suburban Americans hate weeds! I looked at my sister's yard the other day and loved it. It reminded me of a pasture, or field of prairie grass and wild flowers. All natural, and beautiful..those tall skinny [urple topped weeds of early spring, respendent in their random profusion, rippling in the gentle breeze along with tall grasses and a wild variety of wildflowers of many colors. Natural heaven, to my way of thinking. It always inspires me to postpone that first grass moving just a few more days, to enjoy, one last time, spring's natural floarl bounty. My first thought was, what a geat insect and small animal wildlife refuge, what beautiful natural growth! I told her how beautiful I thought her yard was in this early spring pre mown state, and she recoiled in horror and disbelief at my poor taste, my low standards of lawn care, I, a vertitable wilderness barbarian. She minced no words in exclaiming in no uncertain terms: "I think its ugly. Its a complete mess"! Immediately I recognized her "problem"; what to me is a sort of mild neuroses, a typical American needless yet very present source of anxiety; our cuultural preference for the perfectly mown lawn, with every blade of grass the same species and length, thick, like astro turf, with absolutely no weeds allowed. The kind of lawns you see in neighborhdds where the houses go for upwards of a million dollars or more, such as my sister's neighborhood. The kind of lawns you see in movies featuring wealthy estate owners. There is nothing to me more boring or barren that kind of lawn, beautiful and neat though it is, nothing more boring than a neighborhood of millionaire yards. Like golf courses, nothing but perfectly manicured fairways and putting surfaces, without trees or sandtraps or ponds. For many years she and her hubby hired a lawn care firm to sod, resod, irrigate, andmaintain a constant supply of weed kilig posion spread across teh gree expanse, but, alas, it was expensive, and besides, a weed or two had teh audacity to appear out of nowhere, so they quit the contract. No, surrounde by wilderness, they're thinking of going back to upper middle class suburban lawn paradise, contracted out.