As I walk my neighborhood on Monday morning, I see no one nor houses where it looks like anyone is home. What I do see, even with my limited vision, are bags set out by the curb for trash pick up, full of lawn clippings, branches and weeds. The manicured yards are cut to perfection but there is no one around to enjoy it. Saturdays and Sundays are quite the opposite, in towns all over America, homeowners trading their five-day job for their two-day marathon of inside and outside chores.
It made me sad: this suburban weekday ghost town. You have to work to pay for the place, of course, but as I passed by one after the other, it just felt wrong. We spend so much of our precious limited time watering, mulching, weeding, mowing and trimming and we aren’t around enough to enjoy the lawn of our labor. Instead, our beautifully manicured properties stand closed up and still, proving that it’s people who make even a well-tended house a home.
