Writes Nana of the North: "We have a neighbor who is obsessed with his lawn. He had an underground watering system installed; he fertilizes it every month; he hand-picks the dead leaves that fall on it; he mows it when it grows a quarter of a inch.
"Granted, it is beautiful, but it looks so lonesome.
"When my daughters were little, their father was also obsessed about the lawn. The girls couldn't have a swing set unless it was way out in the back of the lot, and God forbid if sand from the sandbox touched the perfect lawn.
"When I was a child, my father mowed the lawn when it needed it, raked when it needed it, but always wanted us kids to play on it. I have so many wonderful memories of playing on the lawn. I would play I was camping under a blanket thrown over the clotheslines, and playing Annie Annie Over, throwing a ball over the garage roof.
"What is the sense of having all that grass if no one is allowed to be on it? Kinda like putting carpet in a room, then not letting anyone walk on it.
"The grass always grows back, and you can always replace a carpet, but you can never put back memories in the mind of a child who was told: 'Don't play on the grass.' "
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"To have respect for ourselves guides our morals; and to have a deference for others governs our manners."
Lawrence Sterne (1713 - 1768)
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