Many of you like to spend your Saturday evenings rolling around your lawn on your 327-horsepower John Deere Lawninator, enjoying the evening breeze while you mow, and maybe ruminating about the philosophical problems of the ages and even solving some of them while you work. And when you're done, you can look across the work of art that is your green, shiny lawn with the geometrically perfect lawnmower stripes, and say, "See what I hath wrought!" And that's cool too.

Raising a lawn has its challenges, just as everything else does. You'll see yards everywhere with rough spots, uneven, or with bare patches. Or, as happened to some unfortunate homeowners while we were having a drought, somebody threw a still-burning cigarette out a car window and started a fire that burned its way across several yards before it was extinguished. So remember: Maybe your lawn doesn't look the best right now, but things could always be worse.

A lot of folks who are juggling kids, work, household maintenance, and side jobs don't exactly have all the time in the world to sit down and study the fine points of lawn maintenance. I totally get that. This is why my lawn is a wreck. Also, chickens.

So I'm making this book short and sweet, and I hope reader-friendly, though occasionally I'll throw a little science your way. Because it's SCIENCE.

I'm going to lay out the best ways to make a great lawn without having to buy hundreds of dollars worth of chemicals and supplies. I'll talk about how to add fertility to the soil, how to water to keep the grass growing up and the water bill down, and how to keep your lawn mower serviced and working. And we'll pick up a lot of other helpful tips along the way.