In the beginning, I said of our lawn: "as long as it's green."

That approach, it turns out, is like saying of your children, "as long as they're kids," then sitting back and hoping for the best.

My lawn is now a wreck of weeds and brown patches, littered with nutshells from the squirrels, who can tell this is the sort of lawn where anything goes.

Who knew a simple, postage-stamp-size lawn would be so problematic? I had been keen to putter in my first lawn, thinking that gardening was relaxing, assuming that grass would just grow. My husband bought a small push mower and a bag of rye seed. Soon we had a sparse and bashful lawn.

Little did I know what was in store.

The trend in so many home projects these days - from growing vegetables to hanging out the laundry - is toward doing it yourself, going green, simplifying. But anyone who wants to take that approach to lawn care had better be ready for research and hard work.

The lawn turns out to be a humbling, non-relaxing, never-ending project served by a conflicting mess of information, intentions, guilt and crazy internal accounting. It's not so easy to decide:

• Do you do it yourself, or go with a pro?

That first summer, it became clear that most of our neighbors employed professionals, who careened around on noisy, air clogging, gas-guzzling power mowers and planted ominous yellow flags warning of herbicide use. Surely, I reasoned, lawn maintenance was not so difficult or important that we couldn't care for our little lawn without poisoning the entire neighborhood.

Mowing was easy. Prioritizing mowing time was harder, and I failed to acknowledge that if the lawn was to be green, it also would need some reseeding and maybe even fertilizing.

By the next summer, our fragile lawn was sprouting crabgrass and harboring grubs.

I took myself down a peg and ... hired a gardener.

• Can you be ecological AND effective?

For a few years, our greenish yard was ecologically sound, though it lacked the professional sheen of the neighboring lawns. The gardener, who was more of a mower and self-proclaimed non-expert, suspected my no-toxins rule was to blame.

In my next lawn-maintenance failure, I consulted the Internet instead of an expert, with predictably inconclusive results: Lawn products are safe or they're toxic; the "organic" label is trustworthy or it's misleading; the dog will be fine or get sick.

There were some inexpensive, innocuous solutions for weeds, like vinegar or lemon juice; wouldn't it be virtuous to use those? Even better, use them myself and renew my efforts with the push mower?

I let the gardener go.

Here's the problem: Virtue is time consuming and labor intensive.

We kept weeding by hand, if we were going to be outside anyway, watching the kids or cooking hamburgers. It was not enough. The crabgrass unfurled its tentacles and sneered, "Try to love this environment, you weak tree hugger!"

I did try. Maybe its bad rap was undeserved; after all, crabgrass was green, and grew well all summer. A mid-Atlantic crabgrass lawn would be a perfect solution, as sensible as a Southwest cactus garden.

On the subject of chemical lawn products, the Internet offered myriad conflicting stories. On the subject of weeds, it was pretty consistent. For example, clover, another green and easy grower that I thought was a weed, is consistently described as a good addition to the lawn; it adds nitrogen that is a natural fertilizer. Crabgrass was never described positively. I soon found out why.

My crabgrass suffocated most of the lawn and squatted on the dirt in tufts. Come September, the remaining straggles of rye were pummeled and poisoned by walnuts falling from our neighbor's tree.

My well-intentioned crabgrass lawn looked like a minefield, accented by decomposing walnuts and the squirrels' nutshells.

Epic fail, as my fifth grader says.

• Do you keep up with the neighbors, or keep it real?

If I stand on my neighbor's beautiful, if toxic, grass and look at mine, I am ashamed of my raggedy lawn and somewhat embarrassed at trying to keep up with the Joneses. But the only real shame is in holding forth on Earth-friendliness only to wimp out in the execution.

My sister, Rebecca Lucas, a horticulturist in eastern North Carolina, had this simple advice: "The main thing is to grow good grass. Call your county extension service and find out what grows in your area."

The right grass for local conditions should come in thick and, when mature and left at least 3 inches tall, block the weeds. Rebecca suggested cow manure for fertilizer - the country has too much of that anyway - and a pre-emergent herbicide in the spring, which prevents seed germination. Note: It will work on crabgrass, and also on my regular grass, so seeding at the same time doesn't make sense.

I guess a flawless lawn just doesn't exist naturally, but good practices will minimize the need for chemicals.

So this fall, we are starting over. We have hand-pulled the crabgrass; for such a ruthless invader, it gave up easily. The Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester County, N.Y., recommended a fescue blend instead, and in the spring I'll get their advice on the safest herbicide. Their website contains a month-by-month problem-solving index.

Here's what I learned: Consult the experts, be realistic and try, try again.

In a classic Internet moment, I discovered another project. It turns out that crabgrass seeds can be fermented.

When life gives you crabgrass, make beer. Then start over.