Who Hatched the Bright Idea of a Beautiful Lawn?

Among other unresolved mysteries is that of “the lawn.” It comes as a somewhat unwanted chapter in the American dream of home ownership. Lawns often look better than concrete, if only they were as maintenance free as their inorganic relative.
As a youngster, Stone Harbor amazed me. Where else could be found a place where people actually had glistening white-pebbled yards, or so I believed. That was before I saw a chap flitting around with a canister strapped to his back squirting weed killer on the snow-like rocks to ensure no unseemly dandelions sprouted amongst the cracks.
Wealthy folks, it always seemed, had lawns that looked like lush emerald carpets. Never a weed or encroaching piece of vegetation that did not belong thereupon could be seen. Nor did it seem that their grass grew, since no one could ever be seen who ran a mower over their acreage of green.
I ruminate about lawns because my yard pal, an odd hybrid of a cutting machine, went kaput. It’s been a fairly decent machine, but all of a sudden, it’s acting like it wants early retirement. The latest breakdown was at my son’s hands when, he said, the handle and control just fell apart. It’s at the repair shop awaiting a cable, maybe from Osaka.
It’s a Craftsman body with a Honda engine (so help me, it’s true, I bought it at Sears in Rio Grande where South Coast Karate and Petsmart is located).
No one, including the guy who sold it to me, believes that a Honda engine could be planted upon such a common piece of metal emblazoned with the Craftsman name, but it’s there. Stranger things have happened in this world.
In the interim, the grass is growing. All summer, it grew about a half inch over three-four weeks. Then came the rains of August and September and, voila, grass was rattled from dormancy invigorated by water. I look at it in the morning, and try to convince myself I ought to be happy it’s green. Still, tall grass unnerves me. Since it was instilled by my father such could not be tolerated, anytime the grass and vegetation that resides with it gets to a certain height, the yellow caution flag starts to wave.
Having spent just over $100 earlier in the season to give the poor thing a new “heart,” and faced with the aspect of probably that much to remedy the latest malady, I’d have been better cashing in my chips back then and getting a new machine. Now, I’m in that “what should I do?” phase.
I’ve studied electric mowers at length, cordless and corded. Their advantages: No more worry about carburetors or spark plugs, no more gasoline (getting the right kind and ensuring a capful of some voodoo juice into it so the new gasoline won’t wreck the precious cylinders, thanks, Uncle Sam), no seasonal angst in the spring (will it start after the cold of winter?).
I’ve studied gas mowers at equal length. My only criteria: It must be self-propelled. In the interim this summer, when Old Faithful was unfaithful and in the shop, I rented a push mower. I had no idea how labor intensive mowing could be until that one mowing. I thought by the end of the job I’d be talking to my Maker. Never in all my years sweating behind a mower have I worked so hard to cut that mixture of weeds and grass I call a yard. That alone would have been sufficient test enough for me to purchase a self-propelled mower, hands down.
When all’s well, and I’m happily mowing, maybe 30-45 minutes, I ponder many things, some unprintable, others too questionable to address in a public forum, and some, well, some are just dumb questions like this:
• In Russia, do they have lawn mowers? This is one of my pet questions. When gasoline is priced maybe $6 (or its equivalent per liter — there are 3.78 of them in each gallon, go figure) would a Russian schmuck be out walking up and down trimming his grass? My answer, based solely on economics, no. He would probably spend that sum on something far more important, or at least something to take his mind off his troubles.
• Whose idea was it to have a lawn in the first place? Should we not be more geared to having a garden growing produce that we could eat rather than an expanse of grass to which we must become subservient, and which always needs tending, except in winter.
For part of the answer to the second query, here is what the Website organiclawncare101.com entitled, “The Lowdown on Lawn History.”
“The lawn appears to be a European invention, which makes ecological sense because the moist, mild, climate of Europe supported open, close-cut grasslands. The term also referred to the village “commons”, the meadows shared or held “in common” where villagers could graze their sheep and cattle. These hooved lawn mowers kept the grass cropped, fertilizing as they grazed. Talk about organic lawns.
“Closely shorn grass lawns first emerged in 17th century England at the homes of large, wealthy landowners. =While sheep were still grazed on many such parklands, land owners increasingly depended on human labor to tend the grass closest to their homes. Before lawnmowers, only the rich could afford to hire the many hands needed to scythe and weed the grass, so a lawn was a mark of wealth and status.”
Wait until the government realizes that, they’ll nail us “rich” folks with a lawn tax to improve the environment. Might just be those folks in Stone Harbor had the right idea all along about rocks in the yard.