This’ll make you enjoy your yard work even more

Here’s a timely column from 2008 by Reporter Publisher Emeritus Bill Cooke.

Pete Taylor sent me this. I’d love to credit the writer but it’s one of those items that circulated on the Internet and somewhere along the way the author got dropped.

A ny way, we Rockdale Rotarians have just completed our annual lawn fertilizer sales fund-raiser, and this is timely.

The setting is a typical American suburb. Frank, a homeowner, is talking with Ahmed, a Bedouin shepherd who has lived all his life in the Sinai desert. It’s Ahmed’s first visit to the United States.

Ahmed: As I was flying here, I noticed lots of forests and fields of wildflowers. But here, where you people live, every yard has this short green stuff surrounding the house. What is it?

Frank: We call it “grass.” Where we live used to be full of trees and bushes and wild flowers but we cut them down and planted grass.

Ahmed: What is the advantage of having grass instead of bushes and wild flowers?

Frank: Good question. I guess it gives us something to do with our free time. Every spring we come out and poison any other kind of plant that pops up. Then we spread fertilizer to make the grass grow. It keeps us busy.

Ahmed: You must enjoy it when the fertilizer makes the grass grow tall and thick.

Frank: Actually, we mow it down, sometimes twice a week.

Ahmed: You cut it? So you must use it for something else, like your farmers do their wheat and other crops.

Frank: Well, no. We just cut it, rake it, put it in plastic bags and have it hauled off.

Ahmed: So other people are paying you for your cut grass?

Frank: No, we have to pay other people to haul it away. It actually costs us money to grow the grass, cut it and then have it hauled off. Ahmed: So let me under

Ahmed: So let me understand this. You kill the plants that grow naturally, fertilize the grass so it will grow, only to cut it and pay to have it hauled away?

Frank: Yeah, that’s about the size of it.

Ahmed: Well, at least when summer comes and it’s hot and there’s less rain, the grass doesn’t grow very fast. That should help on your expense.

Frank: Not exactly. In the summer we drag out our hoses and sprinklers and pay for extra water to make the grass keep growing.

Ahmed: Ah, so you can keep cutting it and keep paying to have it hauled off. I have to say, I’m not sure I follow the logic of this plan. But at least you have some trees in your yard that provide shade in the summer. I imagine when the leaves fall off in autumn, they provide nice nutrients for the grass as they decompose.

Frank: Well, they do in our forests. But in our neighborhoods we like to rake up the leaves, put them in big bags and have them hauled away too.

Ahmed: You’re kidding! So what is this stuff you have around the base of all your shrubs? Isn’t that decomposed leaves?

Frank: No, that’s what we call mulch.

Ahmed: And where does mulch come from?

Frank: Well, we buy it in bags or in bulk from a store, and put it around our bushes to protect the soil during the winter.

Ahmed: Frank, I was in one of your stores yesterday and a man explained to me about your movies, called DVDs. He showed me one called Dumb and Dumber. It must be about how you Americans take care of your yards, right?