After beavers were nearly wiped out by the initial wave of trappers that swept through the land that would come to be called Idaho, the next batch of hopefuls were those who thought they could wrestle their riches from the earth itself. While very few hit the motherload, they did manage to dig enough holes and find enough shiny rocks to earn Idaho the nickname of the “Gem State.” The moniker was granted because just about every gemstone known to man could supposedly be found here. While this may be true, I can’t remember the last time I stumbled across an emerald, let alone a ruby or diamond.
Given that we have such a rich history of mining, it only seems fitting that many Idahoans spend a good chunk of their summers digging up their yards to repair their sprinkler systems. It’s mind-boggling how much time and money we spend trying to make something as non-essential as a lawn look good. Unlike trees that provide us shade or vegetables that we can eat, our lawns really don’t do a lot for us. At best they look nice, at their worse they are money pits that can tax our pocketbooks and drain our souls. If you ever want to get depressed, add up the cumulative time and money that you have put into your lawn over your lifetime.
Starting from childhood until the day they park you at Lincoln Court, it’s hard to imagine another part of our homes that demands so much attention, just to look okay, talk about a Sisyphean task. Water, grow, cut; water, grow, cut, repeat ad nauseam. Native Idaho Fallsians are spoiled by the fact that we pay so little for our water, something like three cents per 100 million acre-feet. Because we don’t meter our water we can throw as much water as we want at our lawns. While Californians are reduced to painting their lawns green and taking 30 second long showers, we are able to let our sprinklers run so long that the runoff in our street gutters equals nearly as many cubic feet per second as the South Fork of the Snake River at peak flow.
A few years back, there was a bit of a local kerfuffle over plans to build a splash park right in the middle of Memorial Parkway or something like that. It was an unnecessary concern, just drive around town on any given day in the summer and you'll see dozens of mini-splash parks created by the shearing off of sprinkler heads by inattentive teenagers’ texting while mowing.
Of course, for those who are willing to spend the money, there is another option to pushing a mower in the sweltering sun, a professional lawn care service. I have no idea how many lawn care services we have in Idaho Falls, but there appears to be nearly as many as the number of shaved ice shacks. I can tell you that it is no picnic getting caught behind one of those trailers full of grass clippings driving down Holmes when it’s windy out. Requiring a tarp over a load doesn’t do a lot of good when the sides of the trailer are made of chicken wire. I’m sure that someday Melaleuca will figure out how to merge the two entrepreneurial enterprises to create nutritious lawn clipping ice slushes, allowing them to eclipse Amway for good.
The ultimate irony of course is that no matter how many hours in our lives we spend making our lawns look wonderful, most of us will end up spending an even longer amount of time under the grass, checking out the roots.