My front lawn left this hellish plane on August 9, 2023. After a long battle with the Texas sun and take-all root rot, it turned brown, got super crunchy, and became a fire hazard.
Installed in 1961, my lawn was St. Augustine, which is a dumb grass to grow in parched North Texas. It served for many years as the site of an annual Easter egg hunt, the most notable occurrence of which was the time my 4-year-old son, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, sprinted downhill to grab a particularly large plastic egg that he suspected contained money—and did a face plant so hard that he looked like a Jimmy Buffett scorpion.
Until recently, my lawn was always mowed by me, and I was careful to keep the mower at its highest setting, with hopes that the taller grass would retain more moisture, but then my wife had other ideas and hired some people who came and cut my lawn too low (in my opinion). That didn’t help. Nor did my steadfast refusal to install automatic sprinklers.
My lawn is survived by me, my wife, my son, my daughter, and Katie Dog, who urinates on my lawn every morning before her walk. It is also survived by numerous lawns in my neighborhood, most of which, I am convinced, get watered far more frequently than twice per week, the maximum allowed by the city of Dallas.
A celebration of life will be held at Goodfriend, whenever I next get up there. In lieu of flowers, send some damn Mexican feather grass or autumn heather, whatever Zone 8A xeriscape-y stuff that can survive in Dallas when this place feels like a cremation furnace.
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