Lawns rock! Here’s why:
1. Kids. A visit to a public park with a wobbling toddler often involves one or more of the following:
a. Repeated, but ignored admonitions to your child to leave the stinking, fly-infested trash can alone
b. Repeated, but ignored admonitions to your child to leave the stinking, fly-infested pile of dog shit alone
c. Repeated, but ignored admonitions to that damn dog to leave your terrified child alone
d. Repeated, but ignored admonitions to your child to leave that other kid’s half-eaten and discarded Glutino cracker alone
e. Repeated, but ignored admonitions to your child to please stop wobbling over to the busy road and just stay in the grass for chrissake
All of that can be avoided on your own, quiet, peaceful, fenced-in lawn.
2. They’re soothing. The uniform greenscape is a much-needed respite from the busy jumble that has become the modern world. People in cities are overwhelmed and assaulted by visual stimuli, from billboards to overly-complicated and asymmetrical architecture to the 35 signs necessary to explain a single neighborhood traffic circle. A nice, green lawn, preferably without any curving mulch borders or mounds of wispy ornamental grasses, is a reminder that simple is beautiful.
3. They’re a heckuva lot easier to take care of than the ugly licheny rock-ridden xeric landscapes that enviro-yuppies spend a fortune on creating and then never maintain. In my artificially-watered little town, the properties that have created little native plant havens usually end up with prickly messes overgrown with bindweed, cactus, and dandelions. Nothing’s easier than firing up the ol’ mower once a week and trimming everything into a nice carpet.
Now I realize I should address the things that certain lawn haters like to claim as part of their anti-lawn agenda. And I realize that these are indeed embarrassing little problems with lawns. But they’re not insurmountable!
1. The pollution argument: Ha ha! The enviro-yuppies are totally all over this one. There’s no reason why you can’t have a lawn and use one of those little whirling blade push mowers. Those little whirling blade mowers actually kind of suck for all but a very small, perfectly flat, square lawn with wispy grass, but they make electric and battery-powered mowers that are just as good as the old gas-powered ones, provided you don’t mow over the cord or get too ticked when the battery starts losing its charge after 3.5 minutes of mowing. Someday maybe I’ll get one of those awesome mowers.
2. The pain in the ass argument: Mowing a lawn is waaaaaaaaaay less of a pain in the ass than pulling weeds. It’s also waaaaaaaaay less of a pain in the ass than always keeping your kids inside because your beautiful nature is also a habitat for cougars.
3. The toxic chemical argument: A thick, healthy lawn doesn’t need herbicides because the herbs can’t take root. OK, it may take a few rounds of Weed-n-Feed to get that nice, thick, healthy lawn, but really, once you have that good grass, all you need to do is fertilize (which can be organic or whatever) and pull out the few weeds that wiggle their way in there.
4. The water argument: Oh, OK. Lawns take a lot of water. Fine. You can have that one.
5. The weird huge lawn argument: Some of those rural Midwestern lawns really are weirdly huge. And they’re even mowing their ditches. I hear it’s in part to control the mosquitoes, but I really think it’s just a way for a fat man with a riding lawnmower to avoid his family for five or six hours and call it exercise. So OK, you can have this one too.
I should also mention that I do not in any way support the giant industrial lawns around office buildings that aren’t even used for dull office parties. What a waste those are. And in some towns in Colorado, really nice lawns are maintained (and watered!) in the No Man’s Land by freeway on and off ramps and that’s just ridiculous. But, in sum, nice home lawns are pretty awesome. There’s no reason why we all can’t responsibly enjoy a nice green lawn and still feel like good decent, Capitalists. Because I vaguely remember that Commies are somehow responsible for lawns and dammit, let it be known that I am no Commie!
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3 comments:
Well played, Mauer. (That's a catchphrase around these parts.) It's from an ad that ... oh never mind.) I concede that mowing can be done in a way that doesn't destroy the earth and a few other points. And we agree that mowing near office parks and on the sides of highways is a terrible waste. The latter has been bothering me especially these days. In many parts of Minnesota, the higways are bordered by these beatiful arrays of lush native grasses and wildflowers, which I love to see every time I pass by ... and then they all get slaughtered by some marauding mower. I was thinking of writing my state representative about it but I'd prefer to postpone writing angry letters to strangers for when I'm old and (more) pathetic.
Who knew lawns was such a hot-button issue on the blogs these days?
Be careful mentioning "lawns" at parties, unless you want everyone to start arguing and pointing fingers and making baseless generalizations and alienating half of the population...
On a recent trip to the Flambeau River in Wisconsin, I was astonished to see this big backhoe-like machine creeping along the side of a country road with this big arm with a whirring blade on the end stretched out toward the forests that bordered the road. It was a huge forest-trimmer! I'd never seen that before. It was whacking, like a giant weed-whacker, whatever tree or bush that happened to leaf out a little too close to the road. Now, I understand why you don't want your country roads overgrown, but that seemed a little excessive. And expensive! Wouldn't a simple mower, mowing a few feet on the sides of each road, have achieved the same effect? Wait a sec...uh...am I for or against roadside mowing....? I can't remember...but I am definitely AGAINST weird forest-trimmers!
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