The grass is greener.

For me, this week's experience is a rite of passage.

Learning to ride a bike, first kiss, first love, throwing one's cap in the air after shuffling along to the Pomp & Circumstance tune, acceptance into the college you dreamed of being admitted, getting married to the "one", buying a house and renovating it with aforementioned "one" - just a sampling of those rites. Or passages.

But yesterday when our front yard magically (okay, over 3 days of a landscaping crew working their asses off) transformed into a desperate tangle of vines into the most springy blanket of green grass that begs to have bare feet running upon it? This was when I started to get that feeling of wanting to do cartwheels - perhaps one-handed if I dare say it - and maybe even a brave attempt at an aerial. This grass needed to be celebrated.

A fairly adult-type of feeling to see the earth being moved. The crew performing its mission. The great wall of 1010 was built. No longer a slope of dirt but instead a leveled out phased area that would soon take shape. The grass show up in its rolls. Many rolls. Okay, I know it's called sod. But in the shape of big Ho-Ho's (sans chocolate, damn!).

We zoom off for a few hours only to return to all the Ho-Ho's being unrolled and looking as though sewn together to form a yard. A yard shrouded in the Holy Ho-Ho Quilt. A yard that we may sit upon. Roll upon. Gaze upon. Pick up weekend newspaper whence it laid upon. Ho-Ho Diggity.

This is a damn fine way to get a yard. Seeds be gone!

Growing up on a farm, only the city folk were ordering rolls of grass. Not that I cared or even knew the difference back then. My childhood yard was a forest, an orchard, a garden, a field, a parking area, a roller rink (well, the sidewalk was anyway). And I daresay, I took it for granted. It was an acreage that I used to be responsible for the mowing of, much to my dismay.

But now, I celebrate the yard. For its beauty. Its showcasing abilities. Its place on my list for a rite of passage. And for the fact that my husband can spend more time mowing than the maneuvering it once took to get mower out for use.

There will be no parking on this grass.

Not unless it's our giggling asses uncorking a bottle of wine to raise a glass to the Sod Gods.


~ab