America has a lawn problem.

Nothing against lawns.

But when fully 1/3 of all residential water use goes to landscape irrigation?

That’s a problem.

9 billion of them.

And it’s decorative.

That’s all.

Some badge of suburban accomplishment.

A thing to show the neighbors you care.

Because we don’t use our lawns for anything.

They’re a great place to put the kiddie pool.

But then then it gets too hot for that.

And those kill the grass.

And then we’re back to the lawn problem.

Which is really a different problem.

That we don’t know another way.

We’ve been told by Big Landscaping, which in 2022 had 129 billion reasons to get us to water the lawn, that we need that grass.

That xeriscaping just isn’t for the cool kids.

So we fire up the mower, shake our heads at our water bill, and do it all over again.

To mollify the HOA.

Make our family happy.

Appease that voice in our head that tells us we don’t have much to show for our years on earth, but we do have that lawn.