His Eden

Leonora LaPeter Anton: ST. PETERSBURG — Last November, Ken Conklin sat in a Pinellas County courtroom in his Sperry deck shoes and tried to ignore the men with sallow cheeks who, based on the charges against them, slept in parks, smoked pot and drank lots of beer.

For the second time in a year, Conklin, 41-year-old computer guy and nature lover, had been called to account over the condition of his front yard. The record so far was Code Enforcement 1, Ken Conklin 0. But he was unbowed.

When Conklin's name and case were called ("overgrowth" is how the clerk announced it), he stepped forward.

"Not guilty," he said. A trial date was set for mid December.

Yards go to hell in Florida for lots of reasons. People don't care or they're underwater on the mortgage and they've got bigger things to worry about than making things pretty for the neighbors. There aren't too many homeowners like Ken Conklin who can stand in the middle of some knee-high dog fennel and tell you with real emotion that it's against his spiritual beliefs to cut the grass.