Observations: The Grass Is Yellower
Out in the front yard, it seems that the patch of grass that was dead has grown. It’s the entire yard. Thanks, August heat! But for real…
That’s just fine.
Each year, here in Utah, a yellow yard is bound to happen following the first couple snowfalls anyway, right?
Just down the street (and we’ll pretend it’s “on the other side”), a house had absolutely no green grass to speak of for several months. You might say the grass is yellower on the other side (Get it now?).
To some in this part of the country, the grass being greenest is the pinnacle of yard-care achievement. If your yard manages to survive the summer completely free of weeds, iridescent with a shiny, dewy emerald glow… you’ve done the thing. You are weed free, you shine, you are… dewy? (I think I’m losing the point and, that’s fine, it’s a weak metaphor). The point is, people in Utah really, really care about their green yards. That’s cool. It could be your hobby, maybe it suits your aesthetic, it might up the value of your property, or perhaps it just perfectly covers your bunker full of food that you don’t want to share with the unprepared when the big one hits (Yikes!).
The point is that a perfect green yard doesn’t make for a perfect person, just as the perfect yellow yard does not make for a terrible person.
I know this. You know this. It sounds silly to say but, alas, I grew up in Utah. I saw that yard down the way earlier this summer and I judged whomever it belonged to for how dead it was.
That’s dumb. In my defense, it was only for a moment, but that moment happened, nonetheless.
There are ample reasons they are not deserving of judgment, (and why is it my business anyway?), but here are several reasons:
They were focusing on an incredibly practical vegetable garden. They were conserving water (a resource we know we should treat like gold). They were embracing the natural ebb and flow of nature in Utah (I mean, I was at high elevations in the mountains the other day, and things were not green as they could be).
There are so many reasons to shed my judgments and feel bad for how long it took me to embrace the yellow yard.
I think I’m just going to use this little lesson to remind me not to judge a house (or its owner), by the ground cover.