Of all the things to love about the suburbs…

Of all the things to love about the suburbs, maybe the one that most embodies the American work ethic is the suburban farmers’ devotion to their staple crop: grass.

Life may be meaningless, but try telling that to a suburbanite whose lawn needs his attention.

For lawn enthusiasts like me, what keeps us awake at night – and what gets us up in the morning – is the fear that today may be the day that some native plant species tries to invade my otherwise pristine grass farm. Not over my dead body. Nor over my assortment of lethal chemicals and clipping appliances.

Some people have called the devotion of us grass farmers “silly.” I’ll tell you what’s silly. What’s silly is neglecting your history. Your ancestry. Your humanity.

Your patriotism. What could be more American than a man on a riding lawn mower with a Milwaukee-brewed beer in hand?

Grass farms – otherwise known as lawns – have been a part of our heritage as a suburb-dwelling species for thousands of centuries, or at least since 1897, when a USDA report was published and read by several people. The report specified that lawns should be grown from a single grass species and plucked of any intruding invader. [Fact.] This was a sensible request seeing as how, in the suburbs, a man’s home was his castle, and so the arbiters of fashion rightly urged that our castles ought to be miniature cutesy versions of Monticello and Mount Vernon. (That’s fine – good, even – just please stop calling my regal lawn “cutesy.”)

Even today, in the age of unlimited free Internet porn, grass farming remains a tried and true American pastime. More $$ are funneled into keeping our laws full of fresh and untainted grass blades than on any crop we grow for a reason, like to feed people. [Fact.]

More to the point, grass farming is part of who we are. To neglect that would be a disservice to your nature and to Mother Nature. Just as Momma Nature designed squirrels to plant trees, she designed us primates to populate the Earth’s otherwise barren surface with new strains of drought-resistant and brightly-pigmented grass seeds, thereby sprucing up the surroundings for aesthetically-challenged creatures and preserving precious water, allowing it to be funneled to more important uses, like rinsing the layer of bug goo off of our vehicles.

So to any hippie environmentalist who tries to whine at you over his organic tea, just tell him you’re trying to let Nature run its course.

Little known fact: Grass farming has environmental benefits, too. It has the positive unintended consequence of allowing biodiversity to flourish, such as two or three varieties of Drought Resistant Grass®-loving deer which by the way make excellent meals after they’ve been shot down by either a rifle or a Nissan. (Allow six hours to emotionally recover from gutting the animal immediately after it gazed at you with its dying eyes.)

But beyond environmental reasons, I think we can agree that the most important function of grass farming is adding a verdant, beatific touch to Earth’s otherwise homely surface. It gives us a colorful, orderly, uniform sheet of beauty on top of which we can grill our hamburgers and kick our soccer balls. It gives us and Nature’s other creatures something pleasing to look at, like one of those modern paintings where the canvas is all one color. Ooo, what a nice Emerald Green that is.

You can thank us later, aesthetically-challenged creatures.