Our grass is waist high in places. I’m not talking about our prairie, which hasn’t been planted yet. I’m talking about our yard. We’ve decided to take a “just say no to mowing” approach to our three acres, which means less work, no costly purchase of a giant mower, and all kinds of advantages we didn’t know to expect.

Like I love the way the tall grass blows in the wind, like waves in water, with the seedy tops all bowing together. And how we can put in plants anywhere in the yard we want, not worrying about whether they’ll be hard to mow around or if we’ll accidently raze them. And we don’t know all the different kinds of grasses that grow in the lawn, but we can easily pick out many different kinds, appreciating how different their final heights are, the way they go to seed, the color and texture of their long leaves. I’ve even come to like how they tickle against my bare legs and sneak up under my skirt when I walk through them. We occasionally find spots in the morning where all the grass has been matted down, and can picture the animal that had curled up there for a rest.

There are down sides. Like we have to be vigilant in looking for and taking out black walnut and maple seedlings that would turn the whole place to forest if we left them to it; a mower would chop them all down before they got such big ideas. There are shorter flowers that cannot be seen from much of a distance, and have to be sought out to be appreciated. And people around here chat about having to mow the same way they chat about the weather, and we cannot sympathize. And maybe the whole place will get crazy out of hand, with grasses giving way to more noxious weeds and would-be bushes and trees, and we’ll be cursing the day we let it get so wild.

For the moment, I love it.