The weed-whacker is an essential weapon for the suburban commando, but that’s what they want you to think. There are other options, or so I’ve been told after lamenting the prospect of having to buy an engine that spins a strip of plastic really fast.

Apparently there’s a mechanical version you can buy, something that looks like oversized scissors. I figured there would be something like this, but I wonder how much longer it would take. The joy of my mechanical lawn mower is that it takes the same amount of time as a motorized one. No matter what I have to push a mower over every inch of my lawn. But edging my weeds is a different story. A weed-whacker mows ’em down in one swoop. You don’t spend much time lining anything up or getting as close to the house as you can. The plastic strip won’t hurt cement, so you move in for the kill. I doubt the same could be said of large scissors. You’d have to move in, get the blades around both sides and finish the job. Sounds more like more time and effort than I’d like to expend.

Of course the alternative is a noise weed-whip, so maybe I should stop whining and suck it up. Or I could get one of those scythes, and sport the grim reaper look. Though I’d probably take my leg off.

All this pissing and moaning over some weeds on the edge of my lawn. Sheesh, I need to get a grip.

The other day I mentioned that I need a weed-whacker. A friend of mine (and fellow homeowner) mentioned that he’s managed to scrape by without one. He says for a while the weeds look terrible, but if you can just ignore it, the weeds will grow so long they’ll bend over and look fine. That’s certainly an approach I hadn’t thought of.

Part of me wants to just share a weed-whacker with my neighbors. At least four households come in contact with my yard, and you’d think between those five lawns one or two weed-whackers would be sufficient. Do we really need five? I know it’s the American way, but maybe it’s not the best way.

I’d also love to know if there’s a non-motorized equivalent to the weed-whacker. I like my yard being combustion-free, and I’d like that trend to continue. Of course I don’t want to edge my yard with a pair of scissors. I don’t think I’m quite that stubborn.

Ah, the joys of home ownership continue. As if you didn’t believe me, the sporadicness of my ponderings should be the ultimate proof that I’m now a homeowner. After almost two solid weeks of having a computer disconnected from the Internet, I finally get the computer set up in the house and connected to the Internet, and I’ve spend less than twenty minutes on this thing. Something has to be wrong with me. I’ve never spent less time on a computer since, well since before I had one. Only one thing could be so distracting. It’s not college. It’s not marriage. It’s not a real job. It’s a home (I’m guessing having children will be equally distracting, if not more so, but let’s not go there just yet).

Speaking of children, the frightening thing about having a house is having one with extra bedrooms. Our house has three bedrooms, though that’s not technically true because they all share one closet, so they’re not quite up to code. The third bedroom is also more like an oversized closet. It’s something like 6 x 8 with a little alcove. The previous owners, God bless them, used this third bedroom as their master bedroom. Either they really loved their kids, or they were just nuts. Their bed took up most of the room.

Anyway (back to the children), we call this room the spare room. Or possibly the room of despair, which has a nice ring to it. Or the realm room, because that’s the name of the color we painted one wall in it. However other people don’t seem to be following our lead. One of our friends dubbed it the crib room. Now it’s true, in a theoretical sense, a crib would fit nicely in this room. But we don’t own a crib. We have no plans to own a crib. We have nothing to occupy the crib. We have no plans to get something to occupy a crib we don’t yet own. Yet the rumors persist. While talking to my father-in-law on the phone the other day he nonchalantly called it the baby room.

It’s the spare room. Period.

Yesterday I mowed the lawn. What better way to mark your country’s independence than by proclaiming your servitude to a plant species? It’s often been said that if aliens observed life on earth they would assume dogs rule the planet — after all, who picks up who’s droppings? I think aliens would find our relationship to grass rather strange. We water, fertilize, and weed the grass, nurturing it like one of our own. Then we cruelly hack it down, only to repeat the process. It’s really sadistic, self-defeating cycle.

If you haven’t notice, I don’t really care much for yard work. It took me half an hour to mow our tiny lot with our mechanized push power. Notice I said mechanized, not motorized. It’s the sweat of my brow that makes the lawn mower run, which I somewhat enjoy. There’s no need for a noisy, polluting lawn mower for a yard our size. And the push mower came free with the house. I did manage to earn myself a blister in the process. Owning a home has done wonders to tear up my hands and give me calluses and blisters you don’t experience sitting at a desk all day. After mowing my lawn for the first time I did realize that I’m going to have to buy a weed-whacker. Definitely not looking forward to that. Way too much money on a noisy machine that does way too little work. Though I can’t see a way around it, so I’m just going to have to suck it up. Such is home ownership.

On June 12, 2003 my wife and I closed on our first home. As we walked away from the title office the realization sunk in that we owned a house — and the bank owned us.

1119 Seminary Avenue became our new residence, though we didn’t move in until the end of the June. There was much work to be done, a baptism of sweat and toil. It began as all revivals do with repainting. We painted every room in the house, with the exception of the kitchen and closet. Then we ripped up the carpet and had the hardwood floors finished. A lot of work to do in two weeks, but necessary and well-timed work.

In the midst of this, time was also spent cleaning out the basement, the garage, the kitchen, and anything else you could think of redoing. It was during this time that I had a number of thoughts about home ownership, which I have decided to collect here for the simple pleasure of sharing them.

The Lawn
I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend my excess time trying to make grass green. Who in their right mind would put hours of their day into fertilizing, weed killing, and pruning their lawn? It needs to be cut so you don’t lose small children when they go out to play, but otherwise it’s just grass. Nobody cares if there’s a weed or two. Nobody cares if it dies in July because it’s 102 degrees for three weeks straight. That’s supposed to happen.

The suburban lawn is the most non-diverse ecosystem on the planet. A lack of diversity requires greater input of energy to ensure sustainability. That energy comes from you, weekend warrior, so choose wisely before deciding you want to have the greenest lawn on the block. That glowing green is not only unnatural, it will cost you your once-lazy afternoons for the rest of your life. While you’re sweating under the sun, I’ll find something better to do, thank you very much.

The History
Home ownership suddenly connects you to a great sense of history — assuming you’ve bought a pre-owned house. Someone, in many cases several someones, has called this dwelling home before you have. In the case of our new home, those someones go all the way back to 1910. At some point in time one of those someones had the audacity to paint the bedroom seafoam green. Of course they couldn’t just leave it at the walls, they had to paint the radiator, too. One of those someones also painted the stairs, carpeted over the hardwood floors, and decided that floor-to-ceiling shelving in the basement should be built from the ceiling down. One of these people decided every door needed at least three locks, that one closet was enough for the entire house, and that boards don’t need to be nailed together.

But aside from the oddity of dealing with someone else’s version of upkeep, there’s the simple history. I’m suddenly intrigued about my neighborhood. My home was built in 1910, which would have been relatively early in St. Paul’s history. I can imagine the blocks and blocks of city housing being sparse and not fully populated as they are now. I can imagine the trees along Lexington Avenue as saplings — or maybe the city is on a second generation of trees already, and they don’t appear that much different.

I wonder when the school across the street was built, how long my neighbors have been my neighbors, and what existed here before my house. Was it simple prairie, grasses stretching between rivers and lakes and forests? I slow down while passing the regional section of the bookstore, and I find myself gazing at old maps, wondering what Seminary Avenue used to look like almost one hundred years ago.

The Community
Home ownership also comes with a sense of community that I never felt in an apartment. Renting is such a temporary arrangement that you really don’t put down deep roots in your community. I certainly put down some roots, but I frequented the gas station more than the hip coffee shop on the corner.

Owning a home has made me much more aware of the local economy and it’s effect on my house. If the businesses close to my home fold, that reflects poorly on my neighborhood, and ultimately, the value of my home. It’s in my best interest to support local businesses, lest they close down and seedy shops replace them, or worse, they remain abandoned and become the dens of thieves, druggies, and transients.

Never in my life did I imagine I’d see economics this way. I realized this while browsing through Hamline Hardware and realizing they had everything Home Depot had, and I could make the quick trip here, rather than the longer trip by freeway to the merchandising mecca of home repair folk. The shop is family owned and has been serving the community longer than I’ve been alive. Why buy my nails at Home Depot when I can support my neighbors?

Check it out. No seriously, check it out.

(Once upon a time this was a link to pictures of my new house. For some reason I’m keeping the post for posterity.)

We bought a house today.

You know you’re getting old when you think it’s fun to sit around and shop for houses, trying to figure out the best combination of bedrooms, bathrooms and great rooms. This is not something my hip, younger self would have enjoyed.

So my wife and I are house shopping. This probably has to be one of the most stressful decisions of my life. Planning a wedding? Piece of cake. As long as you picked the right girl you really couldn’t screw too much up. The wedding is only one day–it’s the marriage you have to sweat about. But buying a house isn’t so simple. It’s not one day. You have to live in the freaking house. And it’s not just the house I think is great, I have to find a house someone else thinks is great — namely my wife. And to top it all off, we’re trying to house hunt across country. Joyous.

The truly fun part is imaging the perfect house (how old did that statement sound?). I’m talking built in bookshelves and secret passageways. OK, I’m joking. But I’m serious about the secret passageways. The housing industry is such an old place. The most common (and usually cheapest) house you can find is the cookie cutter development. Every house on the block looks the same, and they actually are the same. The floor plans are identical, maybe reversed for a little variety. Every tree around is clear cut, so you’re left with this manicured, fluorescent green lawn with no shade, interrupted with spurts of concrete. Not exactly what I call home. You’d think developers would realize the value of a tree. It takes 20 years for a sapling to reach an even respectable size, even longer if you want a reasonable amount of shade. Yet they mow ’em all down like they’re nothing. It’s odd how little we value nature.

If I had my way with a house, I’d like to make it environmentally friendly. As people, we’ve come a long way from living on the land. Now we don’t even know how. It’d be nice if our homes were more nature-conscious, even in minor ways.

My electric bill came the other day, and a pamphlet about solar power was included. If you install a solar panel on your roof you can hook it up to the electric grid and get money back. Now why isn’t that common place? The sun’s going to beat down on your roof all day anyway, why not harness a bit of that power? It’s not a big money maker (if it makes any at all), but it’s sustainable. You’re not clouding the air or polluting the water. You’re just soaking up the rays (and this method doesn’t cause cancer).

I’d also love to see a house that uses water more efficiently. How about a gray water system? Rather than flushing any bit of slightly dirty water down the drain, you store that reasonably dirty water (gray water), and use it for things that don’t require perfectly filtered water. So you wash the dishes and then you water the plants with it. The water from your shower can water the lawn. And if that’s too complicated, how about collecting the rain water that streams through your gutters and storing it to water your lawn? Why do we bother wasting so much water to keep the grass green? Seems like there’s easier, cheaper ways to have a green lawn.

And speaking of a lawn, why is the manicured Kentucky blue grass lawn the ideal? Why do we want a mowed down prairie? What happened to nature? The lawn has to be the least healthy, least stable, most susceptible to disease and most expensive natural system to want to put around your house. Having some open space to run around in is great, but can’t we have a little diversity? Why are dandelions and clover the enemy? I like dandelions. Forgive me for not endorsing the manly vision of the Saturday lawn warrior, but I’ve got better things to do than spend my Saturday killing weeds and trimming plants. Let the grass grow, I’ve got things to do. Having some typical lawn is great, but let’s be realistic. Do you really need to trim back the weeds in the farthest corner of your yard? Let it go. Throw down some wild flower seeds and bring back some native grasses and plants. The diversity will require less maintenance, less money, less time.

Of course you can’t exactly find a home with any of these simple modifications. Despite the widespread acceptance of environmentalism, no one is willing to back it up with anything more than recycling their pop cans on the corner once a week. Never mind that being environmentally conscious isn’t just about saving the planet. It’s about being simpler. It’s about saving time and money by letting nature do it’s thing.

From buying a house to saving the world. Sometimes I don’t know how I do it.

“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” (James 4:13-14, NIV).

You know what’s scary? Trying to buy a house. You have to scrape together ridiculous amounts of money for stuff you never knew you needed. You have to plan farther ahead than you’ve ever wanted to plan. It’s really kind of frightening. And while you’re doing all this ultra-long range planning (I’m talking a year or two, I’m only 23 after all), just about anything could happen tomorrow to screw it all up. You could lose your job. Your wife could lose her job. Interest rates could go through the roof. My new car could explode. My apartment could burn down. I could break my wrist and be unable to type.

I suppose living is a precarious business.

You know what else is scary? Fifty degree weather in January in Minnesota.

And so I walked through the alley of the shadow of death. Life on one side, and pain corruption and a pizza shop-front for drug deals on the other. A cop car parks on the corner every night, and you wonder if the cop lives upstairs and turns his head to cough every morning, or if he’s in the middle of the deal, giving a sense of security when it’s really just a loan. The interest is accumulating and it’s sucking the neighborhood dry like the grass in July. The kids play in the side streets and the puddles, thumping basketballs up and down the sidewalk for want of a hoop.

The detached garages are depressed, houses for cars in need of a boost. The windows are broken and the kids know what’s there. Anything worth taking has long since been pawned at the gawdy shop with the neon lighting around the corner. Block by block the neighborhood changes, from the upstart Ethiopian eatery that serves Corona, to the upscale coffee shop with college art work gracing the walls. From the three-quarters empty, obscure denominational tree branch church with the hokey signs out front, to the new and sharp looking Episcopalian church on the corner that had a rummage sale in the basement last week. If you go far enough down the block you hit a park and you know you’ve run the gamut.

The cats and dogs and joggers of the early morning hours know what’s really going on. The buses that rumble through and the high school kids strolling to the bus stop, trying to decide if today’s a day worth skipping. Some days you wonder if we’re all too caught up in our eaves and lawns, our front rooms and our Cadillacs. Some days you wonder if the kids roam free and the parents work late because they really love to feel like their neighborhood, sloping down like the hill, melting slowly like the school yard ice rink, drooping like the front porch or the discarded sleeper-sofa.

1645. That was the house number. It was laid across the wood paneling in a diagonal with those metal-looking plastic numbers from the hardware department. It should have been 1645.5. The house was that small. I can’t believe there was actually a number for it. It was nestled between two houses with enough room on either side to walk, but it’d be a problem if you had a riding lawn mower.

The house could have fit in any two-car garage. It almost looked like a play house. “What’s that? A shed?” “No, it’s where our kids go to play house. When they play house, they really play house.”