In a troubling development, 31-year-old Rhonda Daniels has found herself appreciating a good lawn when she sees one.
“I’ll think to myself, damn, how’d they get their grass so lush?” she tells us. “Then I’ll think to myself, uh-oh, I should have been saving money for a house all these years.”
The occurrences began several weeks ago when the weather started warming up and people started tending to their lawns again. Rhonda found herself clocking a particularly well-groomed front yard when she walked by or noticing a neatly arranged flowerbed on her drives to and from work. She even, on occasion, found herself wondering whether certain homeowners had seeded in the fall, or which pesticides they used to keep weeds at bay.
“Appreciating lawns was something that my parents did,” she tells us. “I was always just like, a lawn is a lawn. But slowly I’ve been feeling that, no, a lawn is not just a lawn. And that’s a freaky feeling, to say the least.”
Rhonda has reportedly been doing her best to distract herself from the attractive landscaping in the neighborhood. When she spies a perfectly manicured driveway, she’ll try to think about pleasant things in life that don’t require homeownership.
“I’ll see a freshly mown yard that is just, ooh, so tight and crisp,” she says. “But then I’ll try and think instead about how my apartment has a vending machine that doesn’t accept credit cards.”
Will this newfound appreciation for good lawns translate into Rhonda looking into buying her first home? Her friends are skeptical.
“Look,” says Rhonda’s former roommate, Brianna. “We all get to that age in life where we start to think about how lawns can yeah, be a little sexy. Most of us just try to take that mental energy and put it into an herb garden we can keep on our 3” by 6” apartment balcony.”
But a balcony may prove to be not enough for Rhonda, whose lawn cravings have been growing stronger day by day.
“I saw one the other day with two hydrangea bushes,” she tells us. “Two.”
Whether Rhonda decides to take the plunge and start working towards owning a good lawn herself, or whether she suppresses her appreciative urges and keeps content with her non-lawn-ownership life, she and her friends can at least agree on something:
“Mowing the lawn would suck,” she says. “I’m envious, but not envious of that.”
