Couple to be fined $500 a day for having a garden

[bigtree]

104. I had a nice patch of green there

no fertilizer but a spray down of ammonia and beer when I mowed. Had a nice mower that I cherished until it died . . . that year the grass grew almost as long as my hair and the neighborhood authority sent me a threatening note about cutting it (the grass). Anyway, I tore up the green and left naught but a path down the middle which eventually got flagstoned and stuffed with lirope. I took out most of the rest of the remaining lawn around the house the next year and bought one of those manual lawnmowers. This year we got rid of everything but the city strip by the street and I bought a scythe-like weeder to knock down the tall growth a couple times during the summer.

It's funny. Most of the yards around here are huge in the front with long stretches of lawn. All of their fertilizer ends up in the two lakes positioned to take all of the town's runoff; predictable result. Thing is, the actual lawn growing season around here is only a couple of months long because of the dependable drought which turns most of them brown and stifles the rest. It's a trip to see all of the fuss over keeping them mowed right down to earth level; then they just croak . . .