I fought the lawn and the lawn won

[vovat]

While it might not sound like it from the subject matter, the Bullshit! episode about lawns was actually pretty good. They focused largely on how some neighborhoods insist that everyone's lawn look a certain way, which is something I've always objected to. Even if you know what you're getting into by buying a house in a place with a neighborhood association (and some people probably don't have much of a choice when buying a home, even if free market fanboys like Penn and Teller might not want to acknowledge this), there's always the possibility that your lawn will die no matter how much work you put into it. To my mind, the whole idea of neighborhood regulations regarding appearance is pretty much stifling free expression, and forcing unnecessary work upon quite possibly busy residents. Of course, the reason usually provided for why other people's houses and yards have to meet some arbitrary standards is because of property values. Unfortunately, they're probably right, at least as far as some home-buyers go. I'm not sure why we as a society should be catering to the "I don't want to buy this property because the guy three doors down has brown grass!" crowd, but I'm no realtor.