It seems I have become a true urbanite now that I have a lush green lawn that is the source of much envy in our community. Having become something of an expert, allow me to offer a few friendly words of advice as to your lawn’s care and maintenance (end sarcasm font here please, editor).

Lawn-type grass is made up of various forms of annoying plants with names like Blue Festus, Kentucky Banjo, Bendover, Herniation, and Dandy Lion. These can be grown from seed, or arrive ready-made on trucks. How they get the grass to grow in nice, neat rolls like that is still being researched by this writer.

Anyway – before planting your rolls of grass you must first hire illegal immigrants to rake rocks into your soil.

Another important preparation is to make sure the soil is sloped such that small ponds will be created during heavy rain storms, light rain storms, or intense sunshine. This is important for your mosquito breeding program which we’ll discuss in a future column.

I seem to be getting ahead of myself a little here, since I forgot to mention that grass needs a great deal of water in order to grow weeds and mushrooms properly. This water is provided by a system known as ‘irritation’. Irritation consists of expensive computers mounted to the outside of your home, the directions for which are on decals that burn off in the first rays of sunshine they are exposed to.

This computer thing is what tells the water where to go, through mysterious white tubes that grow around the outside of your lawn. These tubes occasionally sprout heads, which periodically have water dribble out of them. It either dribbles out or shoots skywards in wonderful, twenty foot high geysers of water, which are quite entertaining, if not terribly good at watering your lawn. Experimentation is the key to a fabulous lawn.

So – your grass is growing! Great! Now what?

Well, ongoing maintenance means controlling weeds, fungus, algae, coral, divots, urchins, bugs and four leaf clovers. Most professionals employ a snobby ‘green’ approach, using ‘organic’ fertilizers, ‘natural’ pest controls and no doubt feeding their lawns granola.

I also utilize a ‘green’ approach, by carefully reading the green printing on the side of my green Roundup “Kills Everything but Concrete” barrel, and spraying it liberally around the yard.

You’ll also need to trim the grass in some fashion. Most people call this ‘mowing’ their lawn, ‘mowing’ being defined as ‘The act of creating large volumes of noise, smoke and vibration while wearing headphones that make you look like a dork’.

In fact, lawn mowing is the art of shaving the tops off of sprinkler heads with fine precision.

The mysterious machinery used for mowing requires fuel, so depending on the price of gas in your area, remember to keep your siphon hose handy.

To mow, simply walk around with the noisy machine until either your grass is shorter, or you’ve lopped off several toes or, in some cases, both.

You’ll also need a trimmer – or ‘Damnstupidthing!’ as I call it (note my correct use of industry nomenclature). Using a trimmer is an excellent method of embedding fine gravel and plant material in your shins. It is called a trimmer since it is so good at trimming the bark off of your new, expensive small trees, which may cause them to flounder.

This device (a trimmer – not a tree flounder, which is covered in a separate chapter) has a satisfyingly loud gasoline engine and a pull rope which is used for shoulder and arm exercise. The rope serves no purpose other than to strengthen the musculature of the upper body, and is not, in fact, used to start the device. Starting the machine should be left strictly to professionals or passing, manly neighbours who know something or other about choking, apparently.

So remember, a clean, healthy lawn is a great way to show off your home. As with all gardening, patience is a virtue, and you don’t necessarily have to sprinkle rock salt on the neighbours’ lawns to make yours look that much better.

Or so my probation officer tells me.