The grass may be greener but it doesn't taste so good....

I've just come back from an evening walk around the neighbourhood. I love stickybeaking at everyone's gardens. The highlight of this evening's garden review was coming across a newish frontyard vegie patch. This particular house is very large and, if I remember correctly, used to be fronted by a large sweeping lawn. This has now been replaced by a big (waterless) fountain from which fans out a number of small paths, like the spokes of a wheel. Between the paths numerous edible plants are obviously lovingly tended - tomatos, corn, pumpkin, onions, rosemary, sunflowers, coriander...those are just the ones I could identify without actually scaling the fence. I would have loved to take a photo for you all but that probably would have been construed as being a bit rude (and illegal?). Needless to say this sight brought a real smile to my face. There were a lot of cars in the driveway (which in and of itself did not bring a smile to my face) but I had romantic visions of a large family all tending this garden together and then enjoying their delicious homegrown produce together all sitting around a big table..ok maybe I'm getting a bit carried away!

The point of all this is - how much better is that big vegie patch than a stupid big lawn?! It struck me that so many people in my neck of the woods have enormous front lawns that, other than guzzling a lot of water and requiring regular mowing, do what exactly? Noone seems to let their kids play in the front yard these days for fear of stranger danger. I've never seen someone having a picnic on their front lawn. In fact I hardly ever see anyone in their frontyard full stop. Yes, I guess lawns are kind of pleasing to the eye - I think some kind of inherent European-ness has ingrained this into me - but really a well loved vegie patch looks so much better. And it has a point! I figure that if you're pouring water onto the space anyway, you may as well get it to feed you in return.

This has got me to thinking....we don't have a lawn ourselves, we rent a place with rather a lot of paving instead (and of course I would NEVER dream of lifting a couple of bricks occasionally to surreptitiously expand our meagre garden beds - who me?!). My parents, on the otherhand, do have a lawn. A really big one. And they live 5 minutes walk away. Hmmm....