the perfect yard

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Back when my husband and I were city slickers, and we were looking for a house in the snoburbs, we shared a distaste for the houses with manicured lawns our realtor insisted on showing us. We didn't want to live in a neighborhood with perfect lawns (ahem, cough cough - the overclass neighborhood just to the south of ours*).

But today, I went out front with one of those obnoxious leaf blowers and raked the storm detritus into the big paper yard bags I just bought. I was so proud of myself. Maybe I've lived in snoburbia too long, but those perfect yards are starting to look pretty good. Next: Maybe I'll go crazy and hire a landscape designer.

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* My friend lives there, and she says she and her husband are the "white trash" of the neighborhood because they sometimes have lumber stacked in their front yard. The neighbors look askance.

Comments

[Queen of the Weezils]

I hear ya! I'm not crazy about perfect lawns either, but at the same time I don't want the yard to be a mudhole. Fallen leaves will kill the grass under them, especially the thick blanket my wooded yard likes to drop, so they gotta go. I get really snoburban and hire someone, though.

We compromise by just caring that our yard is green, without particularly caring that it is green *grass*. I think we have the weediest yard on the block. What isn't weeds are a multitude of types of grass - no golf course lawn for us. But it's green, and that's as good as I'm going to get.

[MattF]

Yeah, but I'll betcha that your neighbor's yard is greener.

[Queen of the Weezils]

Isn't it always greener on the other side of the fence?

[Joe]

Kudos for working in the word "askance" into today's post! :-)

[ex-snoburb from Olney]

The HOA allows lumber in front of the house? *GASP*! Your HOA must not be charging enough if they allow that! Ours sends threatening letters if you leave a snow shovel on the front porch even in the middle of the winter after a huge snowfall.

[Charlene]

Homeowners association? That sounds more "suburbia" than "snoburbia". Except for maybe Avenel (but that's Potomac so what do you expect?).

[king jellyfish]

Note to neighbors who complain about the dandelions: I'm not raising grass. I'm raising children.

[Doris]

Is there such a thing as a homeowner's association that can be reasonable? We bought our home in Olney before there was an HOA there (still isn't!). We have a citizens' association which plans Halloween parties, Easter egg hunts, and the annual picnic. Sometimes I wish there were one, so we'd all have our trash picked up on the same day, etc., but I'm glad no one can tell us that the color of our deck is "not an earth tone," as their HOA told my daughter & her husband.

[Jim Breiling]

Grind up the leaves with the mower and let them break down and add organic matter and nutrients to the soil. Hope that you've been doing this with grass cuttings.
If the volume of leaves is really large, then bagging for Montgomery County pick-up and composting passes muster.

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Yards: Have "grass" when there are kids and hopefully others who play on it, and an area (good sized) in the yard where kids and young at heart adults can create things in and on the ground. I fondly recall having this in my childhood home's back yard, and I let my girls have the same opportunity. What pleasures to recall! Best use ever for back yards.

Otherwise, to the fullest extent possible, replace the grass, which requires lots of work and money to obtain the golf course green look, with bushes, flowers, trees (can be dwarf), with generous representation of edible plants, fruit bushes and trees so you have fresh, organic food at hand for nourishment and pleasure. Be a path blazer: this could be the future in snoburbia. For now, have Hispanics do the yard redoing and plant care so your status as an affluent, too busy with important work for menial labor, is maintained. In time, there will be status in complete self-sufficiency: doing the yard design, planting and plant care oneself, with an abundant crop the basis for top of the pole status.

[m]

You forgot difference between cheapo "grasscutter" landscapers who do the quick "mow, blow, and go", versus the really expensive "real" landscapers who cultivate those lush lawns, tall grasses, ornamental borders, flowering trees, brick pavers, etc.