I couldn't find Clint Eastwood yelling at people to get off his lawn so I found one of John McCaine.
Posted on 09/30/2015 8:49:25 AM PDT by Arec Barrwin
THE AMERICAN LAWN NEEDS TO DIE
BY ERIC NICHOLSONWEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2015
My first inkling that America's lawn obsession might not be terribly healthy came around 1995. We'd just moved into a new house in Far North Dallas, and 10- or 11-year-old me decided that the next-door neighbor's lawn — green and smooth as flawless as a golf-course fairway with manicured grass to cushion falls — was the perfect spot for football. The neighbor, a hard-nosed high school track coach, promptly ran us off and upbraided my father for letting me trespass. This struck me as backward. What good was such cushiony grass if not for play?
At the time, I chalked this up to my neighbor being an uptight jerk, an assessment I stand by. But that explanation is incomplete in that it overlooks the bigger picture: Lawns are awful.
This conclusion is admittedly self-serving. Two years ago, in one of those compromises a married person with two small children and two large dogs sometimes has to make, I agreed to swap our cramped apartment just south of White Rock Lake for a three-bedroom house in Richardson, but I was decidedly unenthusiastic about once again having a yard. Since then, I've waged a half-intentional campaign of aggressive neglect. We haven't watered since we've been there. I own a lawnmower, but it's one of those human-powered reel contraptions and it's no match for the shin-high bluestem that seems to spring up overnight. Sometimes I borrow a gas mower from my fall-prone, 70-something-year-old neighbor, but between work and kids, this can be infrequent. The other day, I peeked outside the window and found that 70-something neighbor had taken it upon himself to mow our front yard. It's not something I'm proud of, but my wife and I figured it'd be best to retreat quietly from the windows. We wouldn't want to startle him and make him fall.
But the awfulness of lawns is something close to an objective fact. Maintaining them is time-consuming and expensive. They suck up ungodly amounts of water. When it rains, their fertilizer-heavy runoff pollutes waterways. They pit neighbor against neighbor's kids. They are decadent and unsustainable totems of middle-class prosperity.
RELATED STORIES Long Live Expensive Water In Far North Dallas, Big Fences Make Mad Neighbors and a 9-year Court Battle Think Your Water Bill Is Too High? Blame the Rain. For several centuries, lawns were the exclusive purview of very rich Europeans, people who were wealthy enough to keep large swaths of land out of productive cultivation and afford the labor required to keep the grass neatly scythed. European-style lawns began to take root in America in the mid-1800s after Andrew Jackson Downing recommended expanses of "grass mown into a softness like velvet" as part of a popular gardening treatise he published in 1841. His ideas were later incorporated into the broad lawns of New York's Central Park and lush, pre-automobile suburbs like Riverside, Illinois, which were aped in subsequent decades by the developers of less exclusive suburbs. “No single feature of a suburban residential community contributes as much to the charm and beauty of the individual home and the locality as well-kept lawns,” declared Abraham Levitt, whose name would become synonymous with the post-war explosion of inexpensive, mass-produced suburbs. In post-war America, lawns became a standard feature of the single-family home.
The cumulative size of lawns is vast. By acreage, tur grass is the largest irrigated crop in America, according to a decade-old NASA estimate, covering three times the area devoted to corn. Clumped together, it would more than cover the state of Mississippi.
Lawns are clustered in cities and suburbs. Lawns are clustered in cities and suburbs. NASA Since the non-native grasses that compose most lawns can't be kept green with rainfall alone, and because water and sunlight make the plant grow, lawns require intensive intervention, sucking up a total of about 9 billion gallons of water per day in aggregate and costing the average homeowners about 70 hours of labor per year. Lawns tend to be punishing for the environment as well. In addition to the ecological effects of runoff, which can overwhelm water bodies with excess levels of nitrogen and phosphorous, there's the act of lawn-mowing itself. According to National Geographic, one hour running a gas mower can pollute as much as driving a car for four hours.
Lawns are particularly troublesome in arid cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas, where it's a challenge to find enough water for people to drink, much less keep a bunch of ornamental grass verdant. The water crunch in a place like Dallas is less acute, but the principles at play are the same. There isn't nearly enough available water to sustain the population long-term without intensive conservation efforts or massive infrastructure investment. North Texans remain attached to their lawns, though recent price hikes for water may spur many to reassess the value of a green yard.
There really aren't that many good reasons for lawns. Responding to a Wonkblog piece describing lawns (accurately) as a "soul-crushing time suck," Turf magazine editor Ron Hall critiques the author for failing to mention "the economic value that nicely maintained lawns add to properties. It doesn’t hint at the good will and sense of civility lawns engender in our neighborhoods. But, the biggest omission in the piece is piece is its failure to mention the well-documented environmental pluses lawns contribute to our communities — capturing dust, their cooling effect, reducing runoff, etc."
But nicely maintained lawns only boost property values and engender civility because that's what decades of increasing suburbanization has led people to expect, not because of some virtue inherent to a well-tended piece of grass. On the latter point, whatever environmental pluses are associated with the typical American lawn would be matched by yards of native plants and grasses without most of the damaging effects.
Lawns aren't going to disappear anytime soon. They are effectively part of North Texas' infrastructure, there for however long the house it surrounds stands. But at the very least people can water a little less, rely on native plants a little bit more. If one simply must have the perfect golf-course lawn, at least let some kids play on it. Finally, if you see a lawn that's a bit overgrown or rough around the edges, don't call code enforcement; congratulate the neighbor on taking a principled stand with their forward-thinking mowing and irrigation policies.
I have three lawn mowers (4wd push mower, birth of for the tractor and a 46” rider. Next year I’m adding a 54” zero turn. I have several acres of lawn and it is like a park. We never water, nor do we fertilize. Neither is necessary.
We live in KY. Mowing the lawn is a pastime here.
This guy can apply his sensibilities to his neighborhood and leave the rest of us alone.
Boy. Auto correct really messed that up. Birth of = Bush hog.
I miss having my own chickens. Eggs in SoCal are about $5 a dozen. We have a small enclosed back garden at our house and keeping 6-8 hens would be doable, The problem being the park management would not be happy.
“It’s easier to tend though, and nobody says it really needs anything beyond a lawn mower if one is willing to tolerate some weeds.”
I agree, as long as it’s somewhat green and can be mowed. The downfall is when people go chemical happy and spend thousands eliminating weeds.
Sort of like trying to get the right balance of chemicals in a swimming pool.
Speaking of pools, if you want to bury money in the ground, use mason jars instead.
Wow. We keep chickens in the backyard. Fortunately we live in the country so we can have roos in there too. I’d miss my chickens.
I grow several hills of the giant Asian cucumbers and another couple hills of pattypan squash just for the chickens. I’m planting a whole row of mixed greens for them today in fact for fall/winter chicken treats.
We’d love a bush hog. We have the zero turn mower though. We let it grow more than a HOA would allow but then sweep the clippings for use in the garden. Nothing goes to waste.
And we don’t water the lawn either. Edible stuff gets watered though. Garden, fruit trees, berry bushes, etc.
I have some of my best trains-of-thought while mowing the lawn. First, I ask myself if I am “mowing the lawn” or “cutting the grass”. I think about all of my fathers lawn-mowers that I’d used while growing up. It re-occurs to me that “good fences make good neighbors”. I think about Ray Bradbury and “Dandelion Wine”. I contemplate the philosophical difference between “Get off my lawn!” and “keep off the grass”. One little snip of that tuft of grass over by that rock can make all the difference between unkempt and well-groomed. It is about cultivation and civilization and landscaping.
I don t need another blowhard trying to take away anything that I have or like to do. If I want a lawn so be it. Fu@k this guy.
Once read a post from a West Texan, “whatever pops up as green I bless it”..... as for my lawn just about the same. It all looks similar when mowed down low, eheheheh.
Wrong! Ethanol is killing the bees. http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/02/opinion/flottum-bees-death/
I haven’t watered or fertilized my acre in well over a decade. When I moved in, it was better described as dirt with patches of weeds. Today, my lawn looks better than ever. Sure, it still has a lot of weeds, but it’s at least half actual grass, and it’s green from spring till late autumn, and has few, if any, bare spots. And my neighbor loves using his riding mower so much that he asked if he could mow my lawn when he mows his. I said yes.
You’re right. Public housing high rises... Cabrini Green for all Americans... that’s what commies want. Four hundred and four days until Obama is out of office... and counting...
Our ranch had a big lawn. Had to cut it three or four times
a season and somehow managed to get rid of 600 tons of the stuff every year....
How he got into the garage is sort of a mystery. But he was probably fairly close and sneaked in when I had the garage door open. I have some glue traps set for him, but no luck so far. Good thing there aren't prairie rattlesnakes around here.
P.S. I haven't told the wife yet. I told her I saw something, but I wasn't sure what it was. She's deathly afraid of all snakes. If the traps don't get him, I hope the coming sub-freezing weather will do him in.
I love my lawn
I despise Scott
The dude that does the voice always sounds like he’s trying to push a 3 inch wide turd out a 1 inch wide sphincter
I couldn't find Clint Eastwood yelling at people to get off his lawn so I found one of John McCaine.
-PJ
Speaking of chiggers, when my father moved to Texas after retirement, one of the first things he did was take his shoes off on a golf course to look for a lost ball in the weeds a small creek. Yep...he had severe case of itching chigger bites for a month or so.
I haven’t seen any snakes for ages around here. I’m kind of surprised too, since I live fairly close to a wetland. I don’t know whether I would tell my wife or not if I saw any. She’s afraid too, but it would probably be better for her to be alert to the possible presence of snakes rather than just come upon one,
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