phik

I grew up in Ohio, but not in one of those hyper-competitive suburban families that uses products like Scott’s Turf Builder Plus, owns a miniature lawn tractor, or contributes to the crippling drought-induced water shortages. We didn’t use edgers, trimmers, or mulch. No, my suburban family spent the summers embarrassing our upper-middle-class neighbours with our middle-class squalor, competing for the brownest and most sickly lawn on the block. I was thrilled, because it meant I could stop mowing.

So it was with some not-inconsiderable shame that I found myself standing outside this afternoon, watering my expensive new instant-lawn, when almost any idiot could see that it was about to start raining. The thing about sod is that you have to soak it, basically create a standing lake in your yard, every day for the first couple of weeks. And since green grass sells houses better than an open mud pit laced with dog poop, I’m willing to do what it takes.

But it’s so ridiculous.