Some interesting facts about America’s favorite pastime—lawn care. (And when you’re done with reading this, get out there and start mowing.)

• An average lawn has six grass plants per square inch. That’s 850 per square foot— which can contain as many as 3,000 individual blades of grass.

• There are 50 million lawn mowers in use in the U.S.

• The first lawn-care book: The Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds, published in 1870.

• About 65% of all water used in American households goes to watering lawns. (In summer, that’s about 238 gallons per person per day.)

• According to the Environmental Protection Agency, as much as 5% of all polluting exhaust in urban areas is from lawn mowers.

• The average lawn absorbs water six times more effectively than a wheat field.

• You can get a degree in lawn maintenance from Penn State University (but they call it “Turf Grass Science”).

• The most popular lawn ornament: the pink flamingo (250,000 are sold every year).

• There are about 40 million acres of lawn in the United States—three times the acreage planted with irrigated corn.

• AstroTurf was patented in 1967. It was originally named Chemgrass.

• A lawn absorbs 10 times more water on a hot day than it does on a cloudy day.

• A 150-pound man can burn 380 calories in a half hour of mowing with a push-mower.

• Before mowers were invented, lawns were cut with scythes (or sheep).

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFAZMolCCJk

• The average lawn grows at a rate of about three inches per month.

• A recent study found that about 65,000 people per year are hospitalized with lawnmowing- related injuries.