Yard of the Month

While it’s true that in my family, I might be the least competitive, that’s like saying I’m the least publicity-seeking of the Kardashians. I still treasure the trophy I won in my 20s for beating a group of mostly children in a one-mile fun run. So don’t be surprised that I once even lusted after recognition for the condition—of my grass. Was it too much to ask to get an award for having the absolutely most beautiful yard in the whole town? After all, it was only a one-month thing, and it was a small town. I’d seen these signs in other yards with far fewer flowers than mine had, which galled me, and, besides, even my father had won Yard of the Month when he had almost no yard at all. He had so little grass they had to stick the sign in a patch of pine straw. I’m not kidding. How could I hold my head up?

One year, in what my wife, Carolyn, calls “The Summer of Bill’s Crazed Yard Sign Lust,” we had several tall crape myrtles and rivers of impatiens and zinnias in full bloom in our front yard while our side yard exploded with a resplendence of bright yellow and orange wildflowers: cosmos, coreopsis, torch tithonia and crocosmia. And I kept our lush, centipede-grass lawn mowed to an attractive height, most of the time. But no eminently deserved award sign, forth came.

Carolyn was a member of the local Garden Club, so when she asked at a meeting about judging criteria (thank you, Sweetheart), the club president hesitated a few seconds, then said, all-judgmental-like, “Well, we do look at edging.” Evidently, she knew where we lived, had looked at our yard, and had seen the centipede grass runners all over the curb. Club judges clearly valued neatness over rich profusion of color and beauty.

In my defense, I’ll say two things. One, I had only a manual edger that hurt my hands and back and, two, when it came to edging, people in our town were insanely obsessed. It was common to spray Roundup on the lawn along the curb, which resulted in a jagged, uneven, overly wide, brown dead zone, not a neat line at all. One resident took it further by digging about a 6-inch-wide, 6-inch-deep trench between his grass and the curb. It was practically a ditch, and it was flat-out ugly—but at least the garden club couldn’t cite him for having any grass encroaching onto the curb, by God. Another lawn competitor took the cake by paving his front yard with cement and then painting it green. This “yard,” located only a couple of blocks from my house, had fallen into disrepair. The paint was badly faded, and the cement in places was crumbling or even potholed. I guess, when it was new, it could’ve been nominated for parking lot of the month. I and my lawn had been kicked to the curb, but I contend that my laissez-faire attitude made more sense than that of my poison-loving, ditch-digging, deranged neighbors.

It’s true I could have bought a powered edger or even a weed eater to give me the competitive “edge” I needed. But then I would’ve been knuckling under to an aesthetic I disagreed with. I chose sanity, integrity, freedom, and individuality―just as our founding fathers did. What good is an award if you have to compromise your principles to get it? This is America!

Luckily, justice prevailed when I got the sign I coveted, without caving. A friend, probably tired of my whining, painted a Yard of the Month sign just for me, and I realized the fake sign made me as happy as if it were legit. (Take that, Garden Club!) Actually, it made me even happier because in addition to calling people’s attention to the beauty of our yard, the sign was also a funny reminder of my friend’s friendship, sense of humor, subversiveness, and willingness to indulge my ego’s deepest desires. She presented the sign to me at an open-mic poetry night, accompanied by a reading of an original poem that ended, “In honor of his tireless effort, this award is from the Literary Club of Mississippi (LYCM), whose motto is if you can’t join them, L-Y-C-apostrophe-M—lick ’em.“

(My thanks to Wildacres Retreat, where this essay was written.)