Another one of those ubiquitous surveys has come up with the unlikely news that grass adds up to 20 per cent more, or around $80,000, to the average sale price of a home.
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Sensible things like pavers, synthetic lawn, decking and concrete are out and what botanists call festuca duriuscula, and the rest of us call grass, is in.
Apparently there’s been a renewed surge in water-guzzling lawns with people planting grass on every square centimetre of land they have as well as on the roofs of units and other buildings.
Even a second-floor dress circle Bondi apartment owned by top Bunny Sam Burgess and put on sale this week for $2.7 million.
The unit has a prized outdoor entertaining area “with its own lawn…”
The grass survey of more than 100 real estate agents found 73 per cent of buyers wanted lawn for a safe children’s play area while a third reckoned it was a good place to relax as well as tarting up the property.
It’s probably true most people grew up with obsessional fantasies about the stuff, like lying on a banana chair on the lawn, sipping a cold stubby and listening to the football.
Or happily mowing it on the weekend.
But Orange people don’t seem to realise that for probably 200 days of the year the grass will be sopping wet or covered in frost, that you only have to look the other way and it becomes choked with weeds, and it will probably give you hay fever.
It makes you wonder who the culprit was who first began the marriage of town and country with the concept that people in the towns and cities should have their fair share of rural delights like being surrounded with grass, which was a good thing if you were a sheep.
What would happen if by some freak of nature it wasn’t possible to cultivate grass under urban conditions?
Supposing it just had to remain where it belongs.
Out in the paddocks, the divorce on grounds of incompatibility of town and country.
So when people begin to get their heads out of the barrel of lawn seed they might like to dream of a new peace on weekends: no more screaming motor mowers, no more back aches from trying to trap unsuspecting weeds and no more excess water bills.
Aussie Cricketers and the ball-tampering saga
Now three Australian cricketers have copped cheating by tampering with the ball against South Africa, players would have been better off adopting the fine old art of gamesmanship once employed by that revered Orange B grade team, the Standard Hotel Wests Tigers.
The Tigers XI used gamesmanship to its fullest extent with admirable results.
There’s nothing in the rules of cricket that says a batsman can’t walk to the wicket casually sipping on a tinny which would have an unsettling effect on the opposing side.
Especially after strolling across to the square leg umpire and giving him the tinny to hold before taking strike.
Then imagine bending down to do up a shoelace just as the likes of South African speedster Kagiso Rabada starts his run.
In a variation of this, think about the reaction by Rabada if Shane Watson pulled out his iPhone and sent a text, holding up Rabada again.
Gamesmanship, not cheating, is the way to go.