I Fought The Lawn....

We sold the lawnmower yesterday.  We had replaced the gas lawnmower with a cordless electric mower three years ago, but then we decided to get rid of the last of the grass in the back yard and it didn't make sense to keep the mower.

I had a beautiful lawn in the front yard of the house I lived in in Northern California.  I watered it, I fertilized it and I mowed it.  And mowed and mowed and mowed.  In the fall, I raked leaves from late August through December.  It was a lot of work, but the climate was appropriate for Fescue grasses, and it usually looked great.  I eventually replaced part of it next to the driveway with a dry river bed of drought-tolerant plants, including salvias,  rock roses and lavenders because it was difficult to water that area and I wanted to reduce water usage.  The back yard had very little grass when I moved in and I certainly didn't want to increase the amount of water and mowing, so it was mostly weeds and ground cover, although I did put in a brick walkway and a rock garden.

In San Diego, the climate is definitely not right for Fescue grasses; there just isn't enough rain throughout the year to sustain them.  The grass here is mostly Bermuda, which I think would survive a nuclear blast; as soon as it got a little water, it would be back.  No matter how you try to kill it, the Bermuda is still lurking there somewhere.  We hope the weed block we've put down in the back yard will finally kill it off, but that remains to be seen.

Some of our neighbors still try to have Fescue lawns in spite of water restrictions.  There's no denying that they look good and feel great underfoot, but with a climate that gets an average of ten inches of rain a year, they require lots of additional water and fertilizer.  Some people have resorted to artificial grass to keep the green look.  The artificial lawns don't require water, don't need to be mowed and look pretty good.  We heard from one of our neighbors that somebody had vandalized her artificial lawn recently by smearing latex paint all over it.  Fortunately, they found it before it was completely dry and managed to get it off.  We still don't know if it was somebody who hates plastic grass or just some drunken fool with more excess paint than brains.

We've noticed on our walks around the neighborhood that many of our neighbors are getting rid of their lawns and going with drought tolerant plants.  We've seen a lot of cacti, which are very beautiful right now--if you like cacti.  I can't say that I do, but I am glad to see yards that require less water and little or no fertilizer to make an interesting landscape.

So we're glad to see the lawnmower go to somebody who can use it; and really glad that we don't need it anymore.