The grass is always greener...

I USED TO love green lawns. Now I know: They are evil. They destroy biodiversity, they blight our environment, they spew pollution. I know this because a paradigm shift happened on our planet: I started mowing.

It was a stupid idea, to switch chores with my husband. He now cooks, I do the yard work. He shops, chops, roasts, and braises. I rake, seed, weed, water, and mow.

Mowing has made me an environmentalist, ready to let the clover replace my lawn. And why, why, does grass grow taller than 3 inches? Crocuses march in perfect height equality, ivy never reaches beyond its lowly inch. If we can engineer tomatoes that are smaller than grapes, where is our miniature grass? Yard work shakes my faith in science. Where are the geniuses who should be mapping the lawn genome?

At the same time, I am gripped by an evil antiplanet desire. Before I was the chief landscaper, I wanted an eco-friendly mower. No gas for us. Ours works on a rechargeable battery. It looks like it was made by Fisher Price. It cuts about 10 blades at a time.

Now that I mow, I want to buy that farm-size mowing thing that you pull behind a tractor. I want to hitch it to the back of my car so I can just drive all over the yard. True, our yard is smaller than our car, but still.

I also used to believe in hand weeding. No chemicals for me. I decided to weed with my bare hands. I was ready to reach into the earth, to connect with the soil, to drink in the aromas of nature. I turned my first handful of topsoil, relishing all of my senses.

I did not know that worms actually live in the ground by the millions. I know worms are good things. I know it was crazy to scream, jump, and have a panic attack. I tried relaxation techniques, which almost worked, but other outdoor challenges defeated me. Namely, Whitey, the sinister cat next door, who brought me a present. It is still lying there, because whenever I go over to clean it up I start shaking and run back to the house.

So my yard work is a little time-consuming. Weed, worm, scream, mow. Repeat. Plus, my husband still believes he has a supervisory role. I usually think he is pretty smart, but the sight of the man yelling out the back door "Diagonal! Diagonal! You mowed horizontally last time!" makes me wonder.

I do believe that the Incas are alive and thriving today. Those mysterious lines in their landscape? Obviously made by men with lawn mowers before golf was invented. The Incas migrated to Boston, where they are currently employed mowing Fenway Park. Centuries from now, scientists will examine the grass at Fenway Park and wonder what the significance of it was, just as they now wonder about the Incas. Those checkerboards of grass, those perfect lines, those exquisite squares -- were they religious? Well, yes.

I toil still, not ready to be the neighborhood pioneer who gives up on grass. Not yet. I've discovered that the job has a few joys in it, like naming the weeds after people who don't like me. Then I yank them out, a titch more viciously than is necessary.

But yesterday I discovered my favorite perk of being the boss of the lawn. I realized that I could do something that men have done since Adam. I used a weed killer spray instead of what they use, of course; I stood in that darn grass and I wrote my name.

Monique Doyle Spencer is author of "The Courage Muscle: A Chicken's Guide To Living With Breast Cancer."