Watching Grass Grow really started in the summer of 2002 when Colorado had a
fairly serious draught which led to
water rationing. This, of course, had rather dire consequences for
those of us who live in suburbia, as instead of being able to watch
our grass grow, our normally green lush lawns turned brown ... and there
were even a lotta bare spots! :-(
Fortunately, 2003 was quite a bit wetter, and if you add enough water to grass
(and optionally some lawn fertilizer), it will grow back as can be seen in
these pictures of my front lawn. Rest assured that along with the grass came
a weed or two ... or bazillion.
Fortunately I have a Hulkin'
weed eater and/or
weed killer
along with Tony the Tiger's
weed whacker! ;-)
It's unfortunate that I don't have any
pictures from earlier; since it was REALLY brown with a lot more holes -
i.e. by the time of the first picture on April 30th, 2003, it had actually
recovered quite a bit. I also came across a picture of
my backyard that was shot in June
of 2002 and the comparison to June/2003 is startling.
My friend Dan,
bet me a round of golf that all the bare grass spots would not be filled in
by July ... but as you see, the grass came pretty close to growing back;
even without applying lawn fertlizer ... although look at Mr. Grass's idea of
fertilizing in the Father's Day, 2004 picture.Some stuff from the early years
- lots more on the Grass Blog.
The Green strip/patch is because Mr. Grass applied lawn fertilizer with a "dumper" rather than a "spreader" ... and 75% of it was gone by time he made the first lap - OOPS!
Google Doodles are very creative twists of the Google Logo that appear on their main page
on various holidays (and other special events) and were first done by Dennis Hwang.
The Watching Grass Grow domain was registered on May 28th, 2005 and went
live sometime shortly after that.
The Grass Blog was started June 19th, 2006 and averages over a 1,000 comments/year.
The Custom Home Construction Cam was online from July/2006 to May/2007 -
movie
In Spring/2008 (and also in 2010 & 2011), the Birdcam was active keeping an eye
on some House Finches.
It was pretty darn cute watching real-time as the babies hatched and grew ...
But real sad when a Colorado Blue Jay swooped in and grabbed the finch chicks. :-(
The first camera was D-Link DCS-6620G wireless webcam (704x480 resolution!) that actually was mounted inside my
Master Bedroom ... looking out! In late/2011, it was upgraded to a Vivotek FD8362 dome (1920x1080 and much better IQ and low light capability) which was placed outside - see pics below. I maintained the 704x480 aspect ratio (cropped a 1408x960 image and then resized) for the website.
On August 15th, 2018, I upgraded to a Hikvision DS-2CD5526G0-IZHS which was
another big improvement in image quality and low light capability ... plus went bigger on the website with 1280x720 images.
- read more about the testing here.The next upgrade was in late/2023 to a Dahua 5442-ZE-S3
Maybe in a couple of years, I'll upgrade to 4K - or even 8K - so you can see individual blades of grass! ;-)
For those interested in stats: In 2006, 7,616,346 images were taken of the
growing grass and viewed by 441,530 unique IP's.
And the Grass was cut 19 times using a couple gallons of gasoline!
In 2007, there were 322,238 unique IP's that watched grass grow ... I guess not as popular ... :-(
In 2008, there was 329,269 unique IP's, 309,545 in 2009, 298,240 (2010), 260,757 (2011), 288,038 (2012), 503,537(!) in 2013, 428,851 (2014), 498,875 (2015), 333,360 (2016), 379,520(2017), 374,889 (2018), 261,366 (2019), 231,364(2020), 214,510 (2021), 181,402 (2022), 137,708 (2023), 145,739 (2024), and 128,762 in 2025 - check out a Google Map of the visitors!
Needless to say, my Comcastic residential Internet connection would not support
all the people who want to watch grass grow ... so the the video feed is
rebroadcast via a GigaBit web server (rather than a direct connection to my house) hosted at Softlayer TailorMadeServers, so it can support lots of viewers.
Watching Grass Grow has been providing (uhhh)
"entertainment" for web surfers around the world since 2005. I stopped keeping track around 2010 (but see the Blog for notable mentions) but here are a few examples from the early years:
Other misc. sites include
CollegeHumor ("Literally, the most boring website in the world") -
DIGG -
Daspace("now im addicted to it") -
Earthcam -
EBaumsworld("most amazing thing on the 7 internets , Wow, that grass looks good") -
MajorGeeks -
PearlDrummers("Amazing. Wow. That is truly the coolest page on the Internet") -
SomethingAwful("I have found what I am going to do all day. Best webcam ever. I cannot contain myself, this is the most exciting thing I've ever witnessed. Very suspensful.") -
Ultimate Guitar("That's the most pathetic lawn i've ever seen, no wonder only 424 people are watching it ...") -
Xgren("I'd rather watch snails slither")
Radio Station Commentaries:
"The most boring website ever" from Roger & JP at WBAB, Long Island, NY
"Watch Grass Grow" (original, 'eh?) from Boris & Sarah at WRRV, Hudson Valley, NY
"Watch Grass Grow.com" (even more original, 'eh?) from Daniel & Webster at Rock107 in Northeast PA.
BrightBlueBeetle's blog post is titled "The grass is always greener on the other side of the Internet" and goes on to say "This is the type of horticultural voyeurism I know everyone.s been waiting for. Catch a glimpse of a sexy lawnmower, or maybe someone fetching the paper in the morning in their underwear. Exciting stuff I know." Well said!!!!
FacePunchStudies has a lengthy thread with coments such as "very exciting & intense ... best thread on FP ... the grass moved a pixel oh God this is so exciting ... this s*it is off the f*cking charts ... most epic website ever ... words cannot express the awesomeness ... this image says it all!")
Laughing City summerizes it well where some dude named Dan raves about watching grass grow in the forum discussion - Paul responds that:
this just shows how exciting Dan's life is.
Is he out partying? No...
Is he out meeting girls?- No...
Is he doing anything constructive at all?- No
He's introducing us all to the ever eventful world of WATCHING FREAKING GRASS GROW Laughing
good Job Dan Laughing
The follow-on response to Paul is:
is paul out partying? no
is paul out meeting girls? no
is he doing anything constructive at all? nope
is he, instead, commenting on someone that posted a live feed of a lawn? yes!!
KidEdibleGareth says: "I actually visit watching grass grow daily to meditate"
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