Mount Morris Little Free Library

I remember my dad always wanted to mow the lawn.nnI never really questioned him; I was just grateful that I didn’t have to do it. I would see him through the windows riding his mower, with his over sized sun hat on and his big sunglasses. I never understood it as a kid.nnIt wasn’t until I owned my own house and started to try to grow my own plants and garden that I grew to understand the joy of mowing your own lawn.nnHowever, unlike my dad, I wasn’t satisfied to simply grow the same boring grass that everyone else was. I wanted to have something exotic and strange. I had my little herbs growing in my kitchen, and my green peppers and lettuce growing in the side yard. I figured I could at least try to grow some more unique grasses in my backyard. I started with some abnormal blue grasses. I tried some golf green creeping grasses. I had some taller plains grasses flown in on a special order. I made friends with a member of the bio department at my local university, and from there I really started to experiment.nnExotic grasses from the great green sea of the Eurasian Steppe. Soft thin grasses from Spain’s great mesa plains. Thick-bladed, long-stemmed grasses from the deep valleys of Chile. I couldn’t get enough.nnMy yard began to resemble a patchwork quilt made of squares of different grasses. It could look like a hodge-podge from the road with strange looking patches of different color, height, and size; but when you looked from my second story window you could see the beauty of my little project. It was a lot of work though, with different watering and shading required for the different areas; and much of it being cut by hand on a weekly basis. I read nearly every book on horticulture available at my local library.nnThese days I find myself admiring my father’s love of mowing his lawn more for his ability to not plant 32 different varieties of grass. I remember him once telling me about the joy of doing a task and doing it well. Someday I hope I can be more like him; at peace and content with the life he chose to live.