I've just spent a couple hours with lawn care. We bought a riding mower, and I have been zipping back and forth trying to beat the sunset. Hung said the other day that he enjoys cutting lawns–what is he smoking?

What is the American fascination with that green parcel of land called the lawn, that settles in front of suburban homesteads? It's just a useless adornment that we cling to, as a last vestige of that earthy life humankind once lived, straight off the fruit of the land. I was reading an article the other day that claimed that tales of the Garden of Eden, a common cross-cultural motif, was a story to remind us of our transition from gatherers to hunters. Our ejection from Eden was the story of how the children of Adam multiplied and the land could no longer sustain them. Grazeable food became scarce, and we had to become nomads and hunt and disperse throughout the lands. The lawn is our own little piece of Eden, a last connection with a mythic past.

– Jamie