This is a photo I just took of our front lawn (larger version here). As you can see, I have made good on the threat I made last year not to mow at all this year. We even went so far as to buy a bag of wildflower seeds to scatter around, since it has been my thought to try to upgrade the weeds with a random sampling of flowers, but we didn’t go quite that far. (Full disclosure: Bridget *did* mow the lawn once this year, just before her parents came to visit for Charlotte’s dance recital, but over my objections.)
I have to be honest with you and say that the first and foremost reason that I decided I wasn’t going to mow the lawn anymore is because I am a lazy bastard, but my secondary reason (and my primary rationalization) is that lawns and lawn care are fundamentally unfriendly to the environment.
I am not alone in this thinking. This New Yorker article by Elizabeth Kolbert looks briefly at the history of the lawn in American culture, from Frederick Law Olmsted (who really deserves the credit for turning America into a big, grassy carpet) to author Michael Pollan (who advocates turning lawns into vegetable gardens), and manages to squeeze in some of the many unpleasant realities about the damage we do to our world with lawn fertilizers, pollution from gas-powered mowers, insecticides, and the like.
This recent Time Magazine article also looks at the evolving relationship between Americans and their front yards. The piece focuses on one of those people who has indeed turned their front yard into a source of food in contrast to the 1980s and 1990s when the perfectly-mowed “Martha Stewart” lawn was king..er, queen.
I’m sure my neighbors all cluck about the deplorable state of our front yard (and you should SEE the back!), but I have the blazing righteousness of self-rationalization and moral superiority on my side. A wild blackberry briar has been growing along side of the front steps, and for the last several weeks I have been enjoying picking tiny but perfectly ripe berries to nibble every time I arrive at home (thanks to Harry, who has killed or chased off all the rodents and other berry-thieves who would have otherwise beaten me to them). The cats simply adore prowling in the high grass and weeds, looking for unsuspecting mice, moles and chipmunks. Not all the weeds are terribly pretty — I do actually wish we’d gone to the bother of spreading the wildflower seeds because by now there would be hundreds of blooms — but it has a somewhat pleasing consistency about it.
Lawns are doomed, my friends. If we are lucky, we wont NEED to turn our yards into subsistence gardens to counteract the coming loss of our vast array of imported fruits and vegetables. I’m not a gardener and don’t relish the idea of having to tend a vegetable garden any more than I ever relished the idea of mowing grass, so I will not be rushing right out to plant zucchinis and tomatoes, but I certainly appreciate the people who might want to do so. Should it ever come to it, though, I’d do it. Meanwhile, you won’t find me frittering away my Saturdays pushing a mower, or even using one of these contraptions:
Dude! You’re just lazy.
You should have stopped there. The rest of your post was just rationalization.
To thine ownself be true.
Me? I’m going with asphalt while it’s still on the market.
Hey, I admitted it was a rationalization right up front!
Never let reality get in the way of a good blog post, I always say.
I haven’t given up entirely, but I have drastically scaled back the amount of mowing that I do. Partly due to our schedule and my reluctance to spend four hours driving around on my lawn on a Saturday, I have gone to only mowing the front, and only when it gets long. So far I have only mowed twice, maybe three times this year. The price of gas doesn’t help, and while that’s just a handy rationalization for me, I suspect there are more lawns that are being allowed to go wild because of the cost of gas, concerns over pollution, and food prices and food safety. We tried a vegetable garden for a couple of years but found that the time investment was way more than we were prepared for.
It’s a little off-topic, but at times I find myself wondering how wrenching the change will be to a 21st-century equivalent of pre-Industrial Age society. Fuel efficiency and alternative sources will only get us so far, it seems, at least in the near term.
Given your more rural surroundings, I imagine you could give it up completely without drawing much attention.
I use nothing on my lawn. I don’t even water, yet I live next door to a landscaper of perfect swath and a well to water.
this summer he has taken pity on me and is mowing my lawn on Fridays every once in awhile he sends a bill.
I have always told husband that my goal one day is to remove the entire brown crusty front lawn and landscape it in no maintenance splendor. It just goes to the bottom of the list every year.
I’m even a lazy gardener in the veg bed and the perennial beds. If it don’t grow, I don’t bother to save it. It has served me well, I guess I have a green thumb by default.
You sound like you need to be living in a condo in the city bucky. Leave the burbs.
I couldn’t agree more, but until the hatchling fledges from the nest, we’re not likely to leave this particular burb.
I’ve thought of goats or sheep as an alternative to mowing, but there are downsides to that just like there are to gardening. In a coming post-oil era, though, I might change my mind. Fresh chevre, mmmm…
Plus, you could make a mean MLT (mutton, lettuce and tomato, with the mutton sliced reeeaaall thin…mmmmm….)