Whose bright idea was it to invent lawn?

I mean, grass isn’t natural. Well, it is – that is to say it grows – but it didn’t surround the place where my house sits before my house was sitting there. And now there’s lots of it and it has to be cut, weeded, whipper-snipped, sprayed and cursed at almost weekly.

And all of this takes time – lots and lots of time. On more than one occasion a friend of mine has asked me to go somewhere and do something fun but I’ve had to say, “Sorry, I don’t have enough free time. I have to cut the grass,” which bugs me because – technically – the time I spend looking after my lawn should really be free time instead. It’s something that shouldn’t have to be done. It’s the same thing as throwing dirt all over the floor and then sweeping it up. If the grass wasn’t there in the first place it wouldn’t have to be cut.

Plus – if like me you have a really big lawn – you have to invest a couple of thousand dollars in a lawn tractor, which drinks a lot of expensive gasoline and chews dog chains.

So where did our lawns come from?

The pioneers didn’t have lawns.

The truth is we imported our lawns from Europe. Specifically, our modern, green front lawns come from European royalty, probably from some queen who had way too much free time on her hands and was looking out the palace window one day and said, “My, wouldn’t everything look lovely if it was green.”

And so then, suddenly, everything was green.

The royals, according to the various sources I checked (the Internet, a couple of books and a friend who has an encyclopaedic mind filled with useless knowledge like Cliff Clavin on “Cheers”) surrounded their castles with lush green lawns and employed “minions” to care for the stuff. Having a lush green lawn and a bunch of minions to look after it was a symbol of status.

I told Helene I wanted to get a couple of grass minions of my own.

She said, “Where do you find grass minions?”

I shrugged. “I think they’re like leprechauns,” I said. “I think they’re already hiding in the grass. The trick is to catch them and get them to work for you.”

“They’re that small?”

“They’re that quick,” I said. “And they’re green too, I think. They blend in.”

Helene though for a moment. Then she said, “Will their feet reach the clutch on the lawn tractor?”

“That’s a good question,” I said. “I don’t know. But I could rig some kind of pulley contraption together if they don’t.”

“Or maybe they don’t need to ride the lawn tractor,” Helene said. “Maybe they just wave some kind of magic grass wand and the grass is perfect.”

“Maybe,” I said, nodding.

We spent the rest of the afternoon tiptoeing around the grass looking for minions.