So this was the year that I gave up mowing my lawn. I think I mowed once in May and then basically decided to say “fuck it” for the rest of the year. Bridget nagged me about it a few times, but eventually she, too, let it go. It rained just enough over the course of the summer that our front lawn didn’t pull its usual trick of turning brown and dying halfway through, and eventually the grass got long enough that it didn’t stand up straight, so it didn’t even look like it needed to be mowed except around the edges. The edge along the rock wall of our driveway filled up with Black-Eyed Susans that naturally seeded from the one we had deliberately planted a couple of years ago, and looked kinda pretty while the flowers were in bloom. There were also some pretty amazing weeds that showed up, but we left them alone, too.
After a fashion, I came to the rationalization that not mowing was a more conscious decision and a statement, rather than just a complete lack of giving a damn. I decided that come next spring, I’d be willing to clean up the edges a bit and put in some effort to address some of the rough spots, but beyond that all I’m going to do is buy one of those cans of wildflower seeds and spread them around to see what other flowers we can get to make an appearance. I think it’s quite possible and somewhat desirable to have a yard that is mostly wild but not a disaster.
This morning, I read John Tolva’s blog post about how his parents, who live in Northwest Illinois, have let their land revert to natural prairie. He goes on to offer up a veritable plethora of factoids about the environmental damage we’ve created by insisting on lush green lawns in front of every house in suburbia — over 700 BILLION gallons of water annually to irrigate 400 million acres of turfgrass, 70 million pounds of fertilizer and other chemicals, 800 million gallons of gasoline to run the lawnmowers, and so on. And, as John points out, that’s all merely for the sake of the aesthetic value of a lawn — lawns are completely unnecessary and have minimal functionality for daily life.
Whether people realize it or not, we are about to come up against the very hard wall of consequence for our environmental follies, and in a world where it’s going to become increasingly difficult to provide a functional and sustainable environment for humans, there’s going to be no room for riding mowers and bags of Scott’s Lawn Builder. So, while I might be a lazy bastard now, in a couple of years my neighbors are going to be looking at me like a visionary.
I’ve been trying to talk husband into converting our front patch of crab grass and dying brown muck into a nice area of rock paths and graveled areas inter-planted with some local, low water plants. The old xeriscape if you choose to follow the coinage.
I would LOVE never having to mow the front.
I live next door to a landscaper who has a well (a rarity here in Newton) and his lawn is always LUSH, well coiffed and perfect. We just look like the white trash house in comparison anyway.
When I lived in the country, many of my acres were fallow. The changes in the wild flora throughout the year were beautiful. I never had to go out and buy seasonal plants to beautify my home. They grew right out in the yard.