A brown thought in a brown shade.

A couple of winters ago I moved my family from the city to the suburbs, and one thing I didn't expect from them (the suburbs, I mean) was the smell of manure. It is ubiquitous at this time of year, omnipresent, suffusive, like the ether. Of course there are delights in suburban living at springtime: the green traces of trees, the shafts of sunlight passing through the dogwood, the frolic of furry animals and the chirping of flighty birds. You know. The innocent laughter of children at play. And everywhere the stench of the barnyard.

A less dyspeptic, or perhaps a more peptic, suburbanite than I would breathe deep of the aroma and sense in it the fecundity of the earth, the eternal cycle of death and rebirth, the whole load of hogwash from The Lion King. What I smell, however, is the stink of human competition. Life in the suburbs, seen clearly, is an eternal cycle of oneupsmanship. It is a bloodless contest played out on the lawns and in the flower beds. Early of a Saturday morning another round begins. The homeowners emerge from their front doors to survey the length of the street. The questions are cruel, pitiless. Whose lawn shimmers most luminously? Whose azaleas explode most spectacularly? Whose beds of shrubbery heave and swell with the most aromatic fertilizer? The grass, goes the saying, is always greener on the other side of the fence. In real life, this is a toothless cliche. In the suburbs it is an accusation, an expression of contempt.

I sound bitter -- as you would, too, if you had my lawn. There are few fences on whose other side the grass is not greener than mine, and absolutely none in my neighborhood. The sweet old couple who sold us the house had over the years taken great pains with their garden. From early spring through late fall it is a riot of colorful perennials -- so impressive that when we moved in my wife said confidently, "It will take you years to kill all those beautiful flowers." But the sweet old couple were also vigorous leftists (I spent half a day removing the "Free South Africa" paraphernalia from the walls of their upstairs office) and as such they were somewhat faddish in their approach to lawn care. Beginning in the late Eighties, the hottest fad among such enthusiasts has been the "natural lawn" -- a rebellion against the suffocating conformity of the Eisenhower years, when the "natural lawn" was known as "crabgrass." Which is what I inherited from the sweet old couple: crabgrass, without, alas, the ideology that transforms it from a weed into a precious gesture of Mother Earth.

Being leftists, the previous owners didn't care what the neighbors might say; they were too busy freeing South Africa to become ensnared in the trivialities of suburban oneupsmanship. I, however, am just shallow enough to worry. Besides, South Africa is free. So when we took possession of the house I did what any new homeowner might do, faced with a lawn overrun by crabgrass and stinkweed and dandelions, and suffering the disdainful once-overs of disgusted neighbors. I went to the bookstore, bought several books on the lawn beautiful, took them home, cracked them open, and read them, serial fashion, for 15 minutes until I got bored and turned on the TV. Then I took a nap.

And here, two years later, is where matters yet stand. Across the street the neighbor I will call Mr. Perfect has begun his seasonal ministrations. These include, but are not limited to, watering, fertilizing, weeding, aerating, dethatching, and applying in finely calibrated quantities a variety of what I take to be grass steroids. I have actually seen him on his hands and knees, scrutinizing his grass. When he does so, fanny pointing heavenward, he lifts his glasses, the better to see his handiwork. He mows constantly, after ratcheting the blade to the proper height, for apparently grass, to be flawless, must vary its length according to the season. And he mows diagonally, so that each path of the mower ever so slightly overlaps the one next to it. The result is something out of Augusta National, without (thank God) the golfers: a sea of emerald green, the prize of the neighborhood, the realization of the suburban ideal. I have never spoken to Mr. Perfect, but I have dreamed of his slow, painful death.

And what must Mr. Perfect think of me? To the city-dweller I once was, this would have seemed a petty question. In an apartment building you judge your neighbors by essential questions, such as whether they play "Get Your Ya-Yas Out" at 2 A.M. Here in the suburbs the questions range over a wider field of behavior. It is still the land of Cheever and Updike and DeVries, a court of harsh and unremitting judgments. And as a conservative, of course, I heartily approve of suffocating conformity. But -- again as a conservative -- I just assumed conformity would never require any exertions on my part. Certainly I never thought it would require bending over the dirt, excavating unpleasant plant life, hauling bags of animal excrement, digging into, well, dirt. This -- let right-wingers be warned -- is how radicals are born.