It only took 6 years to beat the Nazis. The Odyessey was done in 10. Wimps. It took me 50 years to finally win “the grass wars.”
I don’t mind grass as a plant. It feeds my future steaks, it looks good on TV for football or golf, and it covers up the dead.
But I have always hated my own grass. Apparently, I was born with a penis, and that (of course) meant it was my job to mow the fucking “lawn”.
I had two brothers, but when I was 7, my mother picked mine to be the one to mow the acre we had in Ohio.
Moved to the desert, met the Bear, and goddamnit she picked my penis to mow her fucking lawns for the next 30 years.
For the first 40 years of the grass wars, I bitched and moaned and procrastinated. But eventually I would drag my fat ass outside in the sun or the humidity or the searing, skin-burning, life-sucking hell we call summer in Phoenix — and just cut the grass.
In 2009, I started to fight back. I began to refuse to go. Shut the water off to the lawn and let that shit die.
I’m fine with dirt. We live in a desert for fuck’s sake.
People “hike” here. “Ohh the desert is so beautiful” they say.
But leave your front yard looking like the desert and they call you stupid and lazy and they call your yard ugly.
“Those people are killing our property values,” they say.
The Bear refuses to be one of “those people”.
So, she waited. She plotted and planned and eventually made enough money to have the yard she deserves. Two years ago, she covered the backyard in pavers and a patch of fake grass.
Then, I learned that pavers meant parties. We have hosted baby showers, wedding showers, anniversaries, end of the school year, retirement parties… This year we had 30 people for staff Christmas party, and two weeks later had 30 Savages for Christmas.
Hosting a party beats the shit out of mowing two lawns.
Two years later, she had saved enough to do the front yard. This December they cut down the first tree I ever planted, dug out all the plants except one and started over.
More pavers, small bushes and yes, plastic grass. She likes it.
I love it.
Nothing to water or mow. No shitty bermuda grass allergies. No fertilizing with explosive and toxic chemicals (ammonium nitrate). No spraying with known carcinogens (Round Up). No dead spots or mold or fungus invasions that were always somehow my fault, and I had to “fix it” — because everyone talked about how terrible our grass looked and, of course, that’s a direct reflection on the virality of the one in the house with a penis, and it shows that the woman has picked an impotent and feckless partner who can’t even make grass grow…
Ahhhh, but all that shit is gone; the war is finally over… because all my grass is plastic.
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Categories: Phoenix Fables
I’ve been meaning to blog about my yard war because I too have been at war with my grass for years. I even turned off the water and killed it but it keeps coming back. I’ve debated taking the plastic route.
Once you go plastic, you will never go bastic.
The yard looks great. We live in drought-ville USA (central coast California) and can’t maintain a grass yard without offending the whole town. We are debating between that drought resistant plant look or plastic grass. You might have convinced me on the latter.
Plastic grass ain’t cheap. Gravel and a few bushes is less than 1/4 the price.