Lawns are awful, awful things. Think about how much destruction lawns cause. No, wait, don't think of it, because I'm going to tell you:
1. Pollution: Supposedly, lawn mowers are some of the worst polluters around. I heard once that mowing one acre puts as many greenhouse gases in the air as taking a cross-country trip in a hybrid. Now while that's probably not true, it does make you think about exactly how much global warming has been caused by this completely unnecessary activity. No one has ever been fed by a mown lawn. No one has ever died because their lawn wasn't mown. It's pointless.
Why exactly do we need lawns? Because our neighbors will complain if we don't maintain them. Why will they complain? Because it supposedly doesn't look nice to have an unmown lawn. By that logic, if everyone decided that chopping off your pinkie fingers looks great, I would have to do that too. Fuck y'all. I don't depend on your opinion of me to maintain my self-worth.
And personally, I think well-mown lawns look revolting. I look at a sea of uniform grass and think about how many toxic chemicals went into the groundwater to create the same look you could achieve by painting a blacktop green.
Lawns look like what happens when anal retentive serial plant beheaders go wild. Why do people think they look nice? It's the same plant, over and over, at exactly the same length. What could be more dull to look at? Why not just install Astroturf while you're at it?
You know what's nice to look at? Nature. People even go hiking in it just to look at it. Imagine that, walking in circle for hours just to look at stuff. And here's the thing about the nature they tend to look at: It doesn't tend to be large swathes of monoculture, like lawns are. It instead tends to be intricate tapestries of colors and textures, comprising the wide range of plants that live in harmony. It's a thing called ecological diversity, and it's kind of vital for the survival of life as we know it on this planet. If nature just produced rows and rows of identical, artifically stunted grasses, we never would have come about in the first place.
I honestly think there's some control-freakiness going on in the minds of those lunatics who care about their lawns. It's like, "This is the land I OWN! I must CONTROL every INCH OF IT, or the COMMUNISTS WIN!" Of course, what could be more communist than a world in which one species fills every inch at exactly the same size and length ...
2. Pain in the ass: Mowing lawns sucks. It's dirty, sweaty work that results in shards of severed plants sticking to every inch of your skin. Guys who enjoy mowing lawns really should channel that energy into something constructive, something that helps people instead of hurting the planet. If they have to be alone with a machine as they do it, they could maybe build something. They could maybe do anything a little less mindless than pushing a pollution-spewing cart back and forth across a scrap of land.
The worst, though, are the people with riding lawn mowers. So wait, you're so lazy and/or feeble that you can't even push a cart back and forth for a few hours. So your solution is to strap some blades to an especially toxic engine and drive around? It puts me in mind of a person who is too fat too walk driving through a buffet in a Rascal. It's gluttony at an epic, Caligula-type level, where you're so spoiled that you're killing yourself through self-indulgence.
OK, maybe that was a bit of a reach. And maybe you have a large property, and need a riding lawn mower to mow it all. That then begs the question: Do you really need to mow it all? If you get a big boner from looking at long rows of identical short green stalks, fine, do that in part of the area. But why not the let the rest of it go to nature? Then maybe a wide range of plants could live there. And maybe animals! And maybe that patch of earth could support life instead of destroying it! Just a thought.
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5 comments:
How does this issue tie in to Baseball?
As in, does this mean you are an artificial turf man?
I also hate lawns, but luckily, there are many attractive alternatives. Like tomatoes! Or goats!
I agree that Ed is now required to initiate a petition to replace the real grass lawn at Target Field with something fake - think of all the lawn mowing exhaust that goes into making those star shapes in the outfield!
As for me, I like the way grass lawns look. The house I live in has a grass lawn on all four sides, and I think it does look better when it's green. The shortness I don't care about as much. I've recently been told (by the other tenant in said house) that watering the lawn is bad for the environment. I was also told by the landlord, however, that he likes green lawns.
Why green lawns? My guess is that rich Northeasterners got envious (as they usually do) of what the English were doing, lawn-wise, which led them to replicate lawns stateside. Then middle-class Northeasterners moved into suburbs and got envious (as they usually do) of what the rich Northeasterners were doing.
As for Southern Californians, there are two parts to it. First, we got envious (as we usually do) of Northeasterners and San Franciscans and their lawns. Second, we'd decided to relocate the entire watershed of the Sierras and Rockies down here, and we needed to put it somewhere, so why not lawns? Wastefulness is an awesome status symbol. Not only for individuals, but for an entire region as well.
Lastly, I don't know about the rest of the country, but people out here are actually replacing their grass lawns with fake grass. There are multiple companies (that advertise during Padres games) touting this as the great new trend.
And as for painting asphalt green, they've done that for decades in the neighborhood I grew up in. There were lots of Portuguese families, and apparently it was a cultural thing for them to have smooth concrete yards, several of which were painted green. So move to Roseville in Pt. Loma, Ed. and you'll fit it nicely.
I've heard that Astroturf is just as bad for the environment, because it's made out of petroleum and requires a load of machines to keep it clean. That said, I wouldn't notice or care if the Twins switched to artifical turf in their new stadium.
Another point: People in England actually don't have lawns. They have gardens, which they maintain obsessively. But they maintain a wide range of plants, and they don't mow it. In England, there's a tradition of a commons, an area of grass that everyone shares. Here they're called parks, and they suffice just fine when you and the tyke need to throw the ball around. I'm fine with a few patches of grass here an there. I just don't think every single house in the neighborhood needs to pervert nature in an identical, conformist way.
A third point: I have nothing against grasses. But for the love of Pete, use the grasses that are native to your area. People end up having to knock themselves out (and the environment out) trying to prop up the survival of grass species that aren't made to survive in their climates and soils. What most people do with their lawns is like forcing a fish to live in a desert. It takes a ton of water and maintenance, and instead of doing all that, why not just let grow what naturally grows well in your area? Or do you hate where you live?
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