The Lord's Lawn Work

We love our lawns and gardens. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t spend so much time on them. But wait until you hear about the New Garden!

Now that it's springtime, many of us are resuming a once-a-week exercise routine we call ... mowing the lawn! Some of us will pay someone else to do it. But, if we have a lawn, it needs to be mowed.

Often, however, mowing is simply the first step. After mowing, we may grab the weed whacker, and then, if we are particularly fussy, apply some grass shearers to more delicate or intricate areas. In addition, some of us have rolled and edged the lawn, applied weed killer and pesticides, dug out crabgrass and then spread fertilizer, which, of course, ensures that we will have to begin the whole process over again sooner than later!

Writing in The Wall Street Journal about the bustle of lawn care, staff reporter Cynthia Crossen comments, "Lawns of smooth, green grass pit humans against nature in a pitifully lopsided contest. Nature has all the big guns: moles, voles and other obnoxious animals, droughts, floods, insects, viruses and, the coup de grace, weeds."

"In contrast," she notes, "people...