For years I have tried to be PC about not growing large expanses of grass. As in a lawn. We have a little patch in front of my office window, maybe about 12 feet by 28 feet which was planted in grass when I first met my husband and moved into this house to start my life with him. At the time there was no garden area, no flower borders, just this pretty patch of green under some enormous, very well watered but never pruned, apple trees.

I took it upon myself to put in flowers and vegetables all over our yard, but always looked askance at that patch of green. You know, this is Arizona and we aren’t supposed to have lawns, we need to go with xeriscaping, etc. So, I dug up that area and tried native wildflowers. Tried herbs. Nothing grew in that dense shade of the apple trees, so we had a dirt pile right outside the front door for six years.

Then, on August 20 last summer, our granddaughter Tessa was born. I looked on the patch of dirt with new eyes, imagining Tessa crawling there and taking her first steps this summer. Got the apple trees an extreme and long overdue pruning. Put in drought tolerant turf and started building up that little patch of green. In April, filled in the remaining bare patches. On Monday I mowed that little plot for the first time, with an old-fashioned hand lawnmower. Today I look out my office window to see a beautiful little plot of grass for Tessa to play on when she comes over this afternoon!