Personal Essays

I've never understood sprinklers.

This could be because when I was growing up, we didn't have one. It isn't that we didn't have a lawn, we had a lawn. My mother even maintained a couple of flower gardens, a patch of violets, and those chinese lantern and silver dollar plants near the foundation of the house. I just don't remember a sprinkler. The things growing in our yard were expected to be self-sufficient: make do with the rain that falls on you, or you aren't going to make it, plant.

Yet sprinklers still say summer to me. No matter how hot it is, how loud the hot bugs sound, sprinkler water is always cold.