By Edward H. Garcia
I’ve never been much of a lawn man. Even in North Dallas, where lawn is king, ours was the one that was pale green from a lack of fertilizer in the summer and the one with the unraked leaves in the fall. So it was a relief when we moved to our not-on-the-lake home here on the Upper East Side not to have to worry about sod and seed and weed and feed.
That is not to say that things don’t grow around us: on the two acres or so we’ve cleared (make that “cleared”) around the house, we have a variety of hardwoods and pines and cedars and vines and poison ivy and ferns that come back year after year. All of that but no lawn. I’ve been thinking of putting up a sign: “Leaf Preserve–No leaf will be disturbed.” Of course, that’s not true. As Spring rolls in, I try my best to disturb them into mulch.
The best thing for me now about my landscaping style is that I don’t have to worry about offending my neighbors. None of my nearest neighbors can see our house from theirs, and I’m sure they don’t give the wildness of our “estate” a second thought. Still, I remember when I would reluctantly head out to the front of our house in Dallas with rake and leaf bags in hand lest the abundant oak leaves blow into a neighbor’s impeccably maintained yard.
These ruminations on lawn care have put me in mind of the controversy a couple of years ago about “tiger moms.” If you’ll recall, Amy Chua wrote a book describing and extolling her way of raising children — strict discipline, homework before TV, perfection in school work and extracurricular activities like playing a musical instrument. A lot of commentators pushed back, arguing that tiger mothering was controlling and even abusive. Chua said she was not advocating her parenting style, but describing it in a humorous and self-mocking memoir. On the other hand, a lot of people liked the idea of strict upbringing for children, and they would probably respond to critics something along the lines of “Oh, yeah? Then why are your children so lazy and rotten and mine so polite and accomplished?” To me those people who have meticulous lawns are the equivalent of tiger moms — tiger landscapers. Their lawns are better behaved than mine, their bushes more accomplished than mine.
So should I feel threatened by those beautiful lawns or try to become a tiger landscaper myself? I remember talking to a young neighbor in Dallas who told me his ambition was to win “Yard of the Month.” I took a look at my bucket list but never did find Yard of the Month anywhere on it. I wished him good luck and hope that by now he has achieved his dream.
One of the advantages of being an old guy is that things don’t have to be either/or. I don’t need to make moral judgments about other people’s lawn care or parenting, and I don’t need to accept anybody else’s judgment about the way I do things. I can admire a neighbor who lives on our walking route and sits in his lawn pulling up weeds and placing them carefully in a bucket. I just can’t bring myself to be him.
