they say...

The grass is always greener on the other side.

I certainly am fighting that sense right now.  The reason is we just got back from visiting my wife's Dad and his wife at their more-than-fabulous home in Mooresville (just north of Charlotte on Lake Norman) North Carolina.

Their house is so perfect it makes me depressed.

Not while I'm there, but once I get home.

See, my home is simple and basic, nothing like my father-in-law's mini-mansion by the lake and when we arrived home after our trip the day before yesterday after thirteen hours on the road with four kids under nine in the van we were hit--again--with how humble our house is.

So I parked the van, walked inside, changed my shoes and immediately started mowing the lawn.  Then I went and washed my car.

("...the good people of the World are washing their cars on their lunch breaks, hosin' and scrubbin' as best they can in skirts and suits...")

Why?

Couple reasons.

First is my neighborhood.  It's an older one (60+ years) and that means the majority of the residents are retirement age plus and that means their gardens are beautiful.  If you let your lawn lapse in my neighborhood you might get picketed.

And it's not the stupid (Pleasant-ville/Disney) kind of 'manicured' but the blue-collar/immigrant kind of cared-for.  The people in my neighborhood were grateful to be able to buy these simple little houses two blocks north of the lake and that gratefulness led them to take care of their houses for years and years and years and when you have that kind of community focus applied to where you live you end up with one of those neighborhoods that never really depreciate.

In fact, over the course of this recession, while flashier mini-mansion-er type neighborhoods around us have plummeted 30% or more we've lost maybe 8% and houses are still selling here--not in the week to ten days it took during the boom--but in a month or so.

Anyway, it's one of those nice neighborhood where people care.

So you mow and you sweep and you trim and you edge and you plant and you make your town a home.

That's what I did.

And, wouldn't you know it, as my wife and I applied ourselves to the simple work of spring gardening a truth began to dawn on me as my house slowly turned from humble to lovely.  

I realized that the grass isn't greener on the other side.  

The grass is green everywhere.

You just need to tend it.

So I'm feeling a renewed call to 'flourish where I've been planted'.  This is my home.  Sure it's not in NASCAR country (and many of my leftie-readers would salute that fact) and it's not 'on the lake' and it's not very big.

But it's ours and it's simple and--when cared for--it has a kind of meek loveliness to it.

Tomorrow I'm going to the bank to see if I can re-finance it to get some $'s flowing to extend it a bit.

And maybe put in a mansion-worthy hot tub.

Either way, I'm going to be happy.

'Cause, dang, but the grass in that shot up there (taken after I finished cutting it on my return from mansion-land) is plenty green enough for me.

T