Oh, puh-LEASE!

OK, Michelle Porter, are you listening to yourself? I mean REALLY listening to yourself? (disclaimer: I typically don't use my blog for either public outing or flogging; it's just not fair. So, if Michelle Porter happens to be reading this at some point and wants to respond, by all means do so.)

Who is Michelle Porter, you ask? She, according to today's N&O, serves on the landscape committee of a local (Raleigh) homeowner's association. A resident in that neighborhood asked permission to (gasp) plant Bermuda grass rather than fescue. For the record, fescue requires a lot of watering in hot weather (roughly an inch per month), while Bermuda doesn't. While theoretically fescue is an annual, because of the summer's here, it's essentially treated as a perrennial; re-seeding is encouraged, if not required. The homeowner in question was tired of a. having high water bills during the summer watering season, b. tired of his grass dying during droughts, and c. felt like he wasn't exactly making the best use of a limited resource.

The response from the Homeowner's Association? A resounding NO. As Ms. Porter put it, "In a subdivision with 1,100 homes, you have to make a call to have one [type of grass] or the other. You can't have both both because of the cross-contamination with the seeds."

Again, for the record, Bermuda is a fairly aggressive grass -- it spreads easily, and will, in fact, spread into an area of fescue.

OK, fine. Here's my question: WHY IN GOD'S NAME DO WE CARE ABOUT THIS?!?!?!?!? It's GRASS for heaven's sake! It's supposed to be there to keep our front yards from washing away in the rain (not that we've had any), to play on, to pull out leaves and make whistles from them, to lie on and watch the stars, to run barefoot through. Grass should not be a status symbol.

If you're so emotionally bound up with your landscaping (LANDSCAPING!) that you can't allow it to go play with the neighbor's grass there may be something wrong.

Let me re-iterate for those of you who may not live in the Triangle. The entire state of North Carolina is in the worst drought since weather records have been kept. Precipitation levels are about 8 inches below where we normally are (and that's AFTER 3 straight days of rain). Durham will run out of water by Christmas. Water rates may go up to 8, 10, 20 dollars per thousand gallons, depending on one's consumption (mine are now about 4 bucks per thousand gallons). WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF WATER.

But we can't plant a drought-resistant, low-maintence, cheap grass in our yards, 'cause it might go visit the neighbors.

Yeah, that makes sense.