The Bell Curve:

When I checked my backyard this morning, as I do every morning, I thought I could detect some new green grassy spots in the mud. It may have been pure imagination. I’ve been fantasizing about that picture for so long that I can no longer separate high hopes from reality.

Dealing with unfulfilled expectations that I might awake one day to a carpet of green surrounding my house has been a blight on my life — and my bank account — for several years. There’s a kind of certainty of failure in each new attempt to achieve it.

It has been 50 years since I moved from a suburb of Chicago to Southern California, where a good many natives have never awakened to a vista of shimmering green grass. Instead, they plant rocks and crab-grass on sand, while I try and fail to create an island of green.

Deprived of the real thing, I dream of a funky mom ’n’ pop motel I once frequented in Columbia City, Ind. It nestles atop a hill commanding a bright green carpet of grass as far, it seems, as the eye can see. Sitting there with a drink at dusk is the ultimate peace.

Empty stadiums surrounding a brilliant spot of green playing field have a similar effect. My two grandsons and I had a secret entrance to the Colorado University stadium, and we would go there in the offseason to play imaginary football before 50,000 empty seats.

Driving through the Midwest, I would always look for college campuses and stadiums as rest spots, because they offer that same sense of peace I seek in my backyard. That sentiment made up a large part of the reason I settled my family in what was then called Santa Ana Heights — and is now part of Newport Beach.

Only the richest resident could afford enough real estate to surround his home with green grass.

But where they sought an ocean view, I was seeking a yard large enough to make it my spot of Indiana.

And it worked for many years, until watering became a difficult chore and the ash tree in my backyard grew such a high density of foliage that it cut off the sun so totally that even the crab grass filling in for the real thing began to turn brown and die. That started me on a journey with the people who make a living nurturing and generally cheer leading our green grass hopes.

First came the automatic sprinkler system. It cost me $2,500 and saved a lot of watering irritation for me but produced only mud in the backyard bare spots that our dog, Gia, tracked regularly into the house. That’s when neighbors Mike and Ron entered the picture.

They had put in their own sprinkler systems, which gives you some idea of their distance from me in such matters. Their solution was to scatter a cornucopia of grass seed in the blighted areas. That produced some grass growing through the mud — but not much, nor for long. I wanted a quick fix, so against the advice of my consultants, I ordered enough St. Augustine sod to cover the backyard.

I got my quick fix all right. I found out later that the director of the sod operation went off on a vacation the day after he finished my job and didn’t leave directions for its care. So for two weeks I had my grass fix.

I got up every morning and wallowed in it, then the whole back yard began to turn brown, the mud reappeared, and I was out 1,500 bucks.

Ron and Mike were again urging reseeding, and I was reading the little cards stuck in the front door offering to solve my tree problems. The consensus of all those who took a serious look in my backyard was that we would never get grass to grow there again until the ash tree had some serious barbering done and the sun could shine through. So this time I went to the professionals. I have learned after a lifetime to put whatever faith I had left in the pros who were going to be in business in these parts for a while. And that’s where I stand now.

I didn’t take the lowest bid for thinning out the ash tree. I took the guy my instincts trusted the most and who didn’t over-promise results. And so the tree got trimmed for $700, and as I write this I’m looking out my office window at a backyard that looks like a tank might have run through it but is nevertheless awash in sunshine and, I swear, has more green showing than it did yesterday.

That’s because we’re in what I fervently hope is the final stage of this expensive psycho drama. Now, all we need is more money and a lot more already-taxed patience. Once a month for the next 10 months, a truck carrying a magic elixir will park in front of my house and a technician will get out of the truck and spend 20 minutes feeding the elixir to my yard. Then he will collect 50 bucks and get back in his truck and drive away. According to the prognosis he has left behind, the existing clumps of grass — high on elixir — will displace the weeds and spread into the barren spots slowly but surely.

I will let those of you who got this far know what happens. Maybe even have a barbecue party in my new backyard with Mike and Ron as the honored guests for helping to bring the Midwest into our neighborhood. For me, the overweening joy and satisfaction will come from just being in the presence of green grass again, even if it carries a $5,000 price tag, Indiana is on its way to my backyard. And if there is a moral here, maybe it’s that sometimes the greener grass looks better on our side of the fence.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.