Planting grass

am I still growing if my world is getting smaller?

Photo by Lisa Yount on Unsplash

Growth is a concept I have to face everywhere I go.

Whether it’s personal…

Emotional growth!! Overcome distractions, be a better “you” today!

… or professional…

Grow your business! Get more customers!

… or parental…

Raise smarter kids! Spend more time with them! Teach them to hustle!

… or exercise…

Lift more! Row faster! Swim further!

… or food…

Eat more of this! Eat less of that! But don’t grow too big!

I can’t seem to escape this message to embrace more, to say yes to every opportunity, to desire that which I don’t already have, to need and to want and to gorge myself until I choke. I even did this with my garden. I tilled up another square of grass to make way for a few extra beds, maybe to move the crowded blueberries, maybe just to have more space for flowers, but the end result was additional growing room that fell to weeds and more weeds and slumped sunflowers and a touch of despair every time I looked at it. The bunnies ate through the temporary fence that was only put up to keep the puppy out, and I didn’t have time to build a gate or move the heavier fence material in, and by the end of the season that square plot gave me the side-eye every time I passed near.

It was too much. I got bested by weeds and by flowers that fell over, by bunnies, by squirrels, by crows, by the lack of time and daylight hours, by a body that is teaching me more about rest and less about action, by a family who deserves my time as much as the plants do, by a dog who wants another walk, and sometimes by a cold beer or a dirty martini with six olives.

My wife raked out the sad little beds I’d carved into that space just last week. I bought a bag of grass seed, we spread it, and we wait now to see if the lawn might willingly reclaim what I tried to segregate from it. As a gardener—nay, an urban farmer—this act breaks my heart. “Less grass, more vegetables” is my motto. Grass is a waste of space. It’s a monoculture. It’s what every other white man in this neighborhood obsesses over, and I’ll be damned if I’m joining their ranks. Grass is thirsty all the time, and it’s one of the biggest wastes of gasoline from mowing all year long (the grass doesn’t really stop growing here in winter, it just slows down a little). And… it’s boring. I can’t eat it. I can’t do anything with it.

(Okay, hang on—yes, I could go get a couple of sheep and solve some of my grass woes, but I don’t really want my wife to divorce me, so that’s not actually an option.)

More garden broke me. It was the straw, and I collapsed under it. Sure, too much of a good thing, blah blah blah, but that’s not even what I mean here. I literally hit a wall of overwhelm by trying to manage too much space and too many plants, and I just can’t do it anymore.

Grass rests the eye, I once read in a landscaping book. It gives us a place to settle when we look at a yard, to not have to think, to not absorb complexity. Grass lets us rest in unexpected ways. It invites us to sit, to lay out a picnic blanket or a warm towel after a pool splash. It asks if we want to kick a ball around with the kids or laugh at the dog romping on goofy legs. The root system of grass can provide forage and home for insects, for things that crawl and squirm, for frogs quietly hopping from the stream nearby. It holds seeds for birds and mice, dry material for nests, a late afternoon salad for the rabbits.

Is this what I need? This place to rest, to be less complex, to sit on a blanket and just stare at the clouds overhead? And can I get off my environmentalist, farmer-minded high horse and just accept that grass is a good solution in a world where paved surfaces displace rainwater and prevent natural warming and cooling? Is it really so bad to have a patch of lawn?

I know that the garden I have built in the many years of living on this little piece of soil is more than enough to sustain me, and that it will hold the shape of my onion and carrot and tomato dreams when spring shows up. But I need rest, too, and the grass and moss and low-growing weeds of that lawn are the perfect place to find quiet balance.

Your trans friend,

Robin