THE DAY I DUG OUT MY FRONT LAWN...

When we first bought our little Spanish style house in September of 1999, one of the first things that I did (after pulling out the carpet at midnight to see if I had hardwood floors) was dig out all the grass in my front lawn..Now here in Southern California, we are living in a desert... Most people do not realise this...They think we are in England or the Midwest or other areas where there is alot of rain...we do not get a lot of rain...therefore we do not have the water to keep up a green lawn or any lawn for that matter.. .Go to the desert.. .look around... do you see any grass growing??.... The natural landscape is a decomposed granite type of floor with various sages and other shrubs that are indigenous to this area... grass is not one of those things.. So I tore out my lawn.... passersby would ask "when are you putting in the grass?" "I'm not putting in a lawn.." I replied... They snorted and sniffed and walked away... I proceeded to plant various rosemarys ,sages, succulents... any type of plant that didn't require alot of water...I put in rocks and gravel and bird baths and bird feeders.. Someone reported me to the city...I received a citation in the mail to remove the "weeds" I had growing.. I ignored that and carried on my evil plan... As the years went by, I began to notice, that one by one other people started to dig out their front lawns as well... In their place went Mexican sages, Pride of Madeira,Gazanias, Verbenas....Our little neighborhood became a kaleidoscope of color...Hummingbirds, butterflys, birds...the place is exploding with them...People come in their cars to look at our pretty little street...they take pictures..they wished they lived here...