If a golf club lawn rates a 10 and a weed-filled empty lot rates 0, our lawn is a 4, well, maybe a 3.

Through the summer, our lawn progresses from a blanket of bright yellow dandelions to a field of white clover blossoms. (It’s quite pretty just not very American, if you know what I mean.)

It’s not that we don’t like our lawn, which is mini in the front of our duplex and huge in the back, where we have the whole thing fenced in as a common yard.

It’s just that it’s so much work for something that produces little more than lawn clippings for the composter and yet is a huge polluter because we own a gas mower.

We owned an electric Brill, which is perfect for flat small lawns. But our lawn is hilly on the sides and big and unruly in back. We’re heartened, however, by the newer electrics that promise more get-up-and go like gas mowers.

This video from the Today Show walks you through new electric mowers and an electric wheelbarrow, which we haven’t tried and want to know more about.

Eds. Note: Truth be told, it wouldn’t take much for Cait & Marty to convince each other to let the backyard grow wild - permanently. Or be taken over by pumpkin and squash vines. So much green chaos. So little time.