Large grass lawns were a sign of wealth and power for the aristocracy and gentry from the feudal system. When they had large numbers of serfs working their small plots of land and paid a tithe to the landowners it meant that their land could be turned over from agriculture to pleasure.
Growing a big, unproductive, biologically inactive lawn is basically saying “I have so many peasants I don’t need to grow vegetables” and then morphed into the quasi status symbol we have today for suburbanites to complain about each other’s while the planet dies around them.
I was walking across some grass recently and noticed I liked how it was soft and spongy. So I look up how to achieve that for the grass sitting area in my garden. Turns out every lawncare guide says this is terrible and you need to fix it.
Why? Soft and spongy grass sounds like a dream!
The lawncare guides tell me that I need to spend 3 figure sums on machinery to remove it. I tell them to go fuck themselves.
You think that’s bad? Allow me to introduce you to rock yards. I’m slowly getting rid of mine but removing several dump truck loads of gravel is hard work.
Mine was fully concrete paved when I moved in. I know the pain of moving a shitload of rubble.
I got a nasty letter from an anonymous coward complaining about how I keep my lawn.
I dont give two shits about the grass. Bare minimum is all it gets. I also did a round of overseeding with microclover. All the retired boomers in my neighborhood have nothing better to do than dick around with their lawns.
I have every intention of making mine into a meadow or something. Need to figure out what I can get away with.
In the meantime, I will be making a Halloween display that will feature skeletons sitting on top of some pallets (letter writer was mad that I had one leaning against my trash can for a week) with trash cans and a whole bunch of weeds and crap. I also have a spare tire that was used to secure a transmission I bought down to the pallet. I also still have the broken transmission.
The whole mess will be going into the front yard, skeletons will get trucker hats, beer bottles and maybe a banjo.
I can’t wait!
One of the things that bothers me more than it should is people responding to actual problems with “but i like it”.
You say something like “a ‘basic’ lawn like that is bad for the environment in many ways, in addition to being labor intensive.”
They respond with something that amounts to, “But I like it.”
That wasn’t the question! If someone likes murder that doesn’t justify it, right? Because if so this conversation would take a very abrupt turn. So we can infer that there must be some other justification. Probably, “I don’t care about other people”, which remains an insufficient justification for murdering a whining selfish prick.
This is also very easily flipped though.
If you are rewilding your lawn “because you like it” but signed an agreement to maintain the lawn and house to a certain specification, then complain about enforcement when you don’t keep up your end, YTA.
With respect to murdering, there is a social contract or a legal “contract” that says you absolutely can’t, so this argument obviously doesn’t work. “Because I like it” only holds up when there’s no contact at all and then it goes both ways. “Actual problem” has to be agreed in advance of complaining about taking action or not.
And these people that “like it” also really like telling you how you need to manage yours because you are not spending enough on bullshit lawn treatments.
“Oh my god having a lawn isn’t murder you’re being dramatic!” - some small-minded buffoon who doesn’t understand analogies.
They probably couldn’t even explain why they like it, and about the only truly valid reason that isn’t just social conditioning is “I like do yardwork” but then wouldn’t a big nice garden be 1000x bettee for that? Oh, right, you can’t just sit on a big lawnmower and pretend like you’re doing real work.
“Oh my god having a lawn isn’t murder you’re being dramatic!” - some small-minded buffoon who doesn’t understand analogies.
So many people seem to really struggle with analogies. Sometimes I think they’re just responding to the emotional content, and not following the reasoning at all
Pumpkins
I know this meme comm, but anyone have good resources on how to not be a part of this statistic?
r/nolawns
c/nolawns
Joey Santore’s got you!
Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t. One of the best YouTube channels
I appreciate the call out that a natural replacement of local plants is low maintenance, not NO maintenance. The front of your house doesn’t have to look like you died in the bathtub the winter before.
I bet our Lemmy comrades on https://slrpnk.net/ have a handle on it
https://xerces.org/ may have info you are looking for. Depending on where you live you may be able to find seeds of local flowering plants that do well as a lawn replacement, for example: https://northwestmeadowscapes.com/
Shout-out to Native American Seed Company in Junction, TX for all your native grass and wildflower needs in the south and southwest
What? You don’t like glyphosate in your everything?
My heart says no but the microplastics in my brain say glifos ate.
