MARK MY WORD: GRASS IS GREENER ON THE OTHER SIDE OF FENCE

There are two kinds of people in America: Lawn lovers and those who could care less about the green stuff.

Every town has its legions of lawn athletes, those hearty souls who risk sun stroke to keep their grass weed free and greener than Astroturf. One of my neighbors is that kind of person. He is constantly cutting his grass, which more resembles a dark green, plush carpet than a lawn.

There is no wayward grass in his yard. Weeds aren't allowed there. His front yard is trimmed neatly in flowers that are forever blooming, no wilted blooms there.

This is a neighbor who bags his grass clippings, eliminating the usual lawn-clipping dandruff.

Those who love their grass feed it with fertilizer. In the summertime, their lawns often resemble grand fountains as their state-of-the-art sprinkler systems spew forth a dizzying spray of water.

Lawn lovers are forever guarding against weeds. They are constantly making forays into their yards, search-and-destroy missions aimed at plucking those unwanted intruders from among the blades of grass.

In August, it is easy to tell those who love their lawns from those who don't.

Lawn lovers have yards that are still solid green squares. They look like they have been spray painted. The other group has lawns that have a yellowish cast and healthy weeds that run riot through their yards.

My yard is in the latter category. I depend on Mother Nature to water the grass and keep the lawn fertilized. Weeds love my yard almost as much as the rabbits.

Those of us who don't mother our lawns can't help feeling bad at times for our horticultural shortcomings.

Grass is rooted in the modern American psyche, and I am not talking about the illegal kind. Americans are obsessed with green lawns.

But that wasn't always the case. Before the Civil War, Americans didn't have front lawns, notes Virginia Scott Jenkins, a cultural scholar who has written about the American obsession with grass.

"Looking around the world, only Americans have front lawns, nobody else does. Other people have gardens," she recently told The Associated Press.

Jenkins, who has written a book about this obsession, traces its roots back to Merry Old England and the country estates of the late 18th and early 19 centuries.

A landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, fed the grass craze by planning more than 80 public parks, including Central Park in New York.

People wanted to live in park-like settings and the front lawn was born as people started moving out of cities into suburban developments.

Then along came golf and garden clubs and grass became even more revered. The lawn care industry soon had Americans hooked.

For many Americans, the right to a quality lawn ranks right up there with our constitutional right to shoot squirrels and neighbors.

But for those of us who have never learned to love the rites of fertilizer spreading and other rituals of lawn care, it is difficult living in suburbia with our wilted grass and prolific weeds.

No doubt, we need some counseling to set us straight and perhaps some federal agency to deal with our handicap.

Until then, we can console ourselves with the fact that, at least, we have environmentally sound, chemically free lawns. And with bad grass, you don't have to mow as often.

But one thing remains certain: The grass is always greener in my neighbor's yard.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.