It is my favorite time of the week….the weekend when I get to spend some quality time with my family…..I try to find something to write about that may not be common knowledge…..since readership is usually down on the weekends….I try to entertain….

I remember in my youth the big plan for city dwellers was to move to suburbia so their kids will have a yard to play in and not the street….but once we moved we were told that the lawn was a status symbol and if we must play then do it in the street…….growing up I earned summer cash by cutting lawns….with a push mower that I had to keep blades sharp so it would cut the grass and not bruise it…..

And this is where I pick up the post….lawns…..

“It’s kind of like the American dream has changed,” a real estate broker tells the Boston Globe, which reports that US lawns are in danger of disappearing. According to the Atlantic, the average home size has increased about 50% since the 1970s to 2,500 square feet. Meanwhile, the average yard size has shrunk by more than a quarter. The fact that the average lot size has shrunk 400 square feet in the past five years alone isn’t helping. “They want more house,” a developer tells the Globe. “They’re looking for more square footage. They don’t care as much about the yard.” There are any number of reasons for the shift: developers maximizing profit, dwindling undeveloped land, a move back toward city centers, people spending less time outside, environmental concerns, etc.

The Atlantic calls the endangerment of the American lawn a “sinister” development. “What does the United States stand for, if not the right to a fertile, springy carpet of turf thicker than the Bradys’ wall-to-wall shag?” it wonders. And the Atlantic isn’t alone in its concern. While people are happily sacrificing their own lawns for more square-footage, their neighbors feel like those disappearing lawns are partly theirs. “We used to look out on the grass,” a woman tells the Globe after an old home nearby was replaced with a larger one. “Now we look at a wall.” “If you let it get eaten away by little pieces, then we’re not living in our beautiful Winchester anymore,” says another woman unhappy with a nearby expanding home.

Geez, what will all those “lawn care specialist” do?  Me?  I could care less these days…if it dies so much the better…..there is always green paint.