It's Not About the Grass

Understand that I am not opposed to smug self-satisfaction. Not at all. In fact, some of the happiest moments of my life have come from comparing and contrasting my life with the lives of those around me, and coming up righteous. My t-shirts, tote bags, coffee mugs and bumper stickers all say "Smug is Good".

You have to stay alert, however. The enemy of contented smugness is complacency, and if you aren't vigilant, you could lose your superior standing in a blink. Now, if you have been so blessed as to live and work in the San Juan Islands, it's easy to conclude that you got there because you were either specially chosen by Providence, or you have incredible good sense. I'm not arguing with that. You (and, sometimes, me) are remarkable beings with uncommon gifts. Geography has given Islanders the extraordinary opportunity to create a community removed from a lot of the nonsense found in the rest of America.

But heed me now. Texas used to think that it was entitled to self-determination and frontier independence, too. We descendants of rugged individualism like to celebrate our non-conformity. Don't get too comfortable.

If you have never traveled through Texas, you may be under the impression that it's a dry and lawless wasteland, filled with guns, snakes, tumbleweeds and religious zealots. And some of that is certainly true. Guns, snakes and zealots are just part of the wallpaper – so constant that they don't incite much comment. Tumbleweeds, ditto. Once, driving on the highway outside of Lubbock, a tumbleweed* bigger than my car came bouncing in off the flatlands and broadsided my Opel GT with such force that it nearly drove me sideways into the ditch.

Still, it's not all prickly-pear and dust storms. As you can see by any map, Texas covers a lot of area (State motto: "We're bigger than France!"...quite a lot bigger, actually) so the climate and terrain is wildly diverse. It's not just oil wells and zero topography. If you follow the map toward the Louisiana border, you will notice that Texas is also a gulf coast state. The closer you get to the Gulf of Mexico, the wetter and greener it becomes. By the time you find yourself on Padre or Galveston, you are sitting on islands and under palm trees and you are just an iguana and a piña colada away from Cancun. But if you're three hours west of Houston (and I am as I write this), even though there's plenty of vegetation and piney woods, you still have to respect that water is not guaranteed. There are droughts. You try to conserve and be conscientious, just like in the SJIs.

Regular thinking people respected the limitations of water for a very long time. Most country folk had windmills and cisterns. Those people who were so citified as to try and maintain a lawn in a semi-arid climate at least had the sense to invite the un-thirsty volunteer grasses to infiltrate. In years of water scarcity, lawns just died. While there were always lawn nuts on every block, neighbors understood that if you wanted your yard to look like a perpetual golf course, it was a private affair between you and your sod provider. But no lawn code was imposed beyond a general requirement that you keep your noxious weeds under control to discourage vermin.

Then one day, foreign people started moving in. The demand for new, comparatively inexpensive housing, and the trend toward New Urbanism came to this stretch of cedar patch, and the snakes had to slither farther west. In less than five years, development pods of five to eight hundred residences with schools and dry cleaners and oil changing garages proliferated until they blurred the limits between one city and the next up and down the interstate. The developments have lofty names, often vaguely Italian, like Bella Vista and Bella Terra, when nothing about the flat scrub terrain on which they are built suggests anything even remotely Tuscan, or scenic.

Still, a family can sell their 70s era spilt ranch in, say, San José for 800K and buy a sprawling new faux stucco manor in Vista Capri, or Terra Del Cotta or Costa Biscotti (including pool) with a third of that and have plenty left over to put in the right sort of lawn. A really, really green and thirsty lawn. A lawn that complies with the strict guidelines of the Landscape Committee of The Villas at Tuscano.

What follows is the story of my dear friend, Anna, and what can happen when a region, once the very definition of free spiritedness (like the SJIs), relents to conformity. This is allegorical. It's not about the grass, but Bermuda and Zoysia are my metaphorical vehicles. Read this in a voice of ominous warning.

Some years ago (and I understand that the earth had already cooled) Anna graduated with a degree in Natural Resource Management. She put her education to good use in work with the National Park Service and historic preservation. In modern times, Anna is a writer for an international organic foods company. She is so passionate about food sustainability that she spends her evenings out in moonlit fields with biodynamic growers. She participates in heirloom seed clubs; she gardens and plants and conserves. She also bought a house in Tuscan Creek Estates. The price was right; the development adheres to the design principles of New Urbanism. It's attractive and safe (except for the occasional meth lab, but what upscale gated subdivision doesn't have a few of those?).

Life at the Estates in the first months was going pretty well, and Anna (a committed believer in xeriscaping) was looking forward to turning her sizable yard into an abundant organic Eden with fruit trees and herb gardens and butterfly habitat complete with rainwater cachment. The sort of garden where an heirloom tomato – a possible descendent of true Tuscan tomato royalty - could really feel appreciated. And while she reckoned on battling aphids and deer and slugs, she had not planned on crossing swords over grass.

It started with the first letter informing her that she had been judged by the Tuscan Creek Landscape Committee (TCLC) and was found to be out of compliance. Her first warning noted that three (count them…three!) dandelions had been observed in her front yard. The citation went on to caution her that if the condition of her front lawn didn't come up to standards mighty quick, she would lose her swimming privileges at the Tuscan Creek Community Pool. Further warnings ensued.

One reproved that her mailbox was showing evidence of mildew and demanded that she clean it with an appropriate anti-mildew agent immediately. Another remonstrated that while certain fruit trees in the backyard were permissible, they had to be listed on the approved Fruit Tree Roster. In another act of willful disregard of the TCLC Bylaws, Anna had made a flowerbed in violation of the Flower Bed Construction Code. This did not go unnoticed.

And then, on that saddest of days, Anna learned that unless she tore out her inferior lawn of mixed volunteer grasses and replaced it with the evergreen golf course kind, she could NEVER, NEVER, EVER hope to be considered for Yard of the Month. As you can imagine, this was quite a blow. First, the loss of her pool card, then, exclusion from Lawn Heaven.

Here's the thing, besides being attention and water hogs, purebred lawns are fragile and expensive. Sodding even the smallest of yards will thin your wallet (Bermuda covering 504 square feet per pallet runs at around $105, and Zoysia, covering 450 square feet per pallet comes in at $200 without delivery or installation). To tolerate the conditions of Central Texas, these shockingly green and unnaturally soft grasses need a sprinkler system and the bimonthly services of ChemLawn to keep them thriving. As you might conclude, 500 lawns constantly doused with water and fertilizers and pestiticides create a lot of pollutant run-off into Tuscan Creek and, eventually, into the drinking water supply. Winning the dubious acclaim of Lawn of the Month is akin to being named "Environmental Stupid-Head of 2008". It is not an honor for distinguished service to your community.

But none of this bowed our Anna. She is a resilient woman who has overcome a fair bit of adversity, and she has developed a strong character cloaked by abundant external charm. She did not resod her lawn. She did not hack down her apricot tree or brick-in her flower bed or even pull up any of her three dandelions (although, I hear that she sprayed down her mail box with a bio-friendly vinegar solution). Instead, she joined the Tuscan Creek Landscape Committee and now works to change the system from within. She volunteers to judge Christmas light displays and invites organic gardeners and xeriscape designers to come and speak at Landscape Committee meetings. She is hoping to plant the seeds of sustainable native grasses in the hearts and minds of her community one blade at a time.

So, did you get the subtle subtext? If silly ideas can blow in from foreign lands and germinate in the front lawns of Texas and, somehow, establish themselves as quasi-law with faux authority here (of all places, where the point of a gun was the only law that anyone understood, á la Liberty Valance), it can happen anywhere. People will come and impose their rules and ideas about grass and anything else on you, and before long, you're jumping like a retriever for a tennis ball to win Lawn of the Month. What used to be a contented smugness in the certainty of your independent and colorful way of life can quickly deteriorate into a framed certificate signifying your obedience.

All I'm saying is, just stay alert for the ways in which a community can become homogenized into a deceptive tidiness, where everyone behaves as they should and self-proclaimed groups are formed to create pockets of micro-government. If you aren't paying attention, before long, you won't be able to keep a collection of junker boats lying about waiting for the eventual day when you'll get around to cannibalizing one to repair another.

Behavior that used to be voluntary becomes mandatory; information that should be private, like medical tests, is suddenly disclosed everywhere. Several techie magazines sell pocket size gizmos that detect if surveillance cameras are nearby. Carry one of those around for an afternoon and you will be shocked to learn how often your discrete intimate scratching is being recorded somewhere, by or for someone in the name of some higher purpose: security, economy, public safety, expediency, or just raw data.

It starts with the quest for phosphorescent green uniform ground cover, but it doesn't stop at the lot line. It's not about the grass. Plant strong.

* Fascinating fact to know and share: tumbleweeds are not a collection of mixed brush and debris. A tumbleweed (the generic name for several species, including Russian Thistle and Salosa) is a drought resistant shrub with shallow roots that was accidentally imported as a stowaway in flax seed. Later, it was planted in the belief that it would provide grazing for cattle. This proved untrue, and the U.S. Agricultural Department lists it as a "noxious weed."

Tumbleweeds, although Ukrainian in origin, are such a common symbol of the Old West that interior and set designers have created a demand. Firms like Montana Tumbleweed will sell you a "Large" 25-30 inch diameter tumbleweed for $30 (excluding shipping). My advice to you would be to shop around...a 30" tumbleweed ain't "large". A tumbleweed bigger than an Opel GT is, really, only medium.

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Ingrid divides her life between the San Juan Islands (where her heart lives) and Austin, Texas (where her paycheck is generated). While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra ..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."

Ingrid is an old-school Libra and believes that the Revolution should be a catered event.

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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