We haven’t raked the leaves that fall in our yard for years — it’s part laziness and partly because we have a corner lot in a windy part of the world, so they don’t hang around much. If we do anything, it’s to mulch them with our lawn mower and leave them in place.
And now I have vindication! we’re helping to protect the environment (warning: autoplay video at that link). I guess I’ll just keep on keeping on.
Now I just need a justification to stop mowing the lawn.
At the end of the season, I mow the lawn extra short, so the leaves blow straight across it and into the neighbor’s yard.
I’m leaving mine, just as they fall, plus the sweepings from off the deck. Looking out the window, I see that my neighbour, a keen gardener, appears to be doing the same.
(We don’t have mowers, because the condo’s grounds people mow the lawns in our individual lots.)
I wouldn’t have a lawn in the first place. They’re horrid things that were once a symbol of wealth and status (“Look at all this land I have that I don’t need to put to productive use!”) and they’re horrible for the environment. Dig the whole thing up and let natural local vegetation take over. Remember, all a “weed” is is a plant that’s supposed to be growing there.
Also, look at all the people I can afford to pay to maintain it! Remember, lawns – huge, formal lawns – were invented long before the lawn-mower. They were all originally mowed with scythes – and not nice, light, razor-sharp modern scythes either. Lots of work.
Thanks for the advice, but I don’t mow anyway (our lawn dies this summer because all the servants were on leave). Now do you also have suggestions how to justify not cleaning the house? That would be immensely useful.
We never had a lawn because “Chauncey” is into plants and grass barely counts. Plus, grass needs too much water for a draught prone area like San Francisco. Also, we don’t have enough territory to do a lawn.
However, we have quite a few trees on our little corner of San Francisco, and there’s an enormous oak tree a few doors down…to the west where the window comes from. So lot’s of leaves on our various plots that we call “gardens,” which are now mostly jungle due to neglect. We compost leaves, either ourselves or through our garbage pickup. Apparently they turn into good potting soil.
It’s surprising to me that people treat leaves as trash. My wife discovered a neighbor two doors down sweeping leaves on the sidewalk and street into our drive. She asked what he was doing and he pointed at our big olive tree in the front and said something about we have trees. Indeed, as does the neighbor between us and him, and any number of other neighbors. I promised that if I ever caught him doing it again I would tell that I’m happy to take back my leaves, but only my leaves so he has to separate them out.
Finally, I work at a large technology company with a number of huge campuses. It’s a company that prides itself on being environmentally friendly, and I think rightly so in general. However, every morning when I get to work there’s an army of guys with leaf blowers collecting the leaves to haul away with noisy machines strapped to their backs and pumping noxious fumes into the air.
Ban powered mowers and gardening equipment, and watch lawns become more natural quickly. Manual mowing is a PITA. And power mowing is simply a waste of energy, turning fossil fuels into noise and air pollution, all so the grass can look unnatural? It’s a bizarre obsession, and you’d be well shot of it, PZ. :)
@PZ Myers – get a goat, you will not need to mow the lawn.
@CaitieCat #7
That is not a good idea from my perspective. I like my garden. I like gardening. I am not fussy about what kind of grass or plants grow there and I do not keep the grass in “lawn state”.
But I have to keep it short and I have to use powered lawn mower. I am not able to mow the grass manually the garden is too big for that and I do not have the time and strength. And I cannot let it grow completely unattended either because 1) I am allergic to grass pollen so when the grass blooms I would be confined to inhouse and 2) ticks thrive in high grass, therefore making the garden even more of a health risk for me. I could not even attend to the fruit trees, bonsai trees and vegetable patches if the grass were not kept short.
There are other motives to keep your garden grass short than snobbish adherence to arbitrary “lawn” rules.
Sadly I live in area that have pretty strict rules on what you can do with your lawn and they are very conventionaly suburban. So, in an effort to minimize my impact and keep my neighbors off of my ass, I use an electric mower that has been charged using power from Green Mountain Energy (which is pretty clean, as far as I know). For water, i manually add only enough to keep it alive (not necessarily lush though). Copious flower beds that are “wild”.
Still haven’t found a good way to get rid of the tree leaves though.
I just need a justification to stop mowing the lawn.
“Saving it for aspirational goats” has worked for me. Try it!
I just need a justification to stop mowing the lawn.
The tall grass will attract Pokemon!
Then you could study evolution the way Nintendo intended.
Charly:
I’m pretty sure pollen in the air can easily travel hundreds of feet. So unless your lawn is gigantic, it wouldn’t make a real difference.
I don’t understand the desire (what some think is a need) for any grass at all. It’s not as if I hate the plant; but fuck, just don’t grow it in the first place and save yourself the trouble of maintaining it constantly. If some is already filling up your property, just let native plants grow there instead.
Or anyway, there’s very little reason to have a whole field of grass. You could use some patches/strips of low-cut grass for areas where you want to walk, but even then maybe consider paving stones or moss or just plain dirt…. What exactly is the reason for having all of it, all over the place? There isn’t one.
A better approach is probably to start by getting the idea out of your head that you should be unsatisfied with things looking messy and natural, so your land requires your intervention somehow. It really doesn’t. You don’t have to design it. You could, and I agree that can sometimes be enjoyable, but it’ll be okay. Really.
And if people are going to design it, then do it purposefully. They should be asking themselves why they’re doing it or what they’re supposed to be accomplishing by doing so. Often, the question they actually pose themselves is apparently something like “what is everybody else doing?” which is a stupid and pointless question to be asking.
People, this really depends on where you live. In large parts of Europe there are some pretty nasty critters using the leaves as nesting grounds, critters that actually kill the trees. Chestnuts are dying because of a certain kind of moths. In Berlin, schoolkids go out and clean away the fallen leaves.
As for lawn mowing, we bought a Rotary Mower which can be powered solely by hand but also via electricity. Even if you plug it in it only uses a fracture of the energy traditional lawn mowers use.
Also, yes, I want something lawn-ish. I actually want to use that territory for my pleasure and recreation. Maybe it’s also privileged to be able to not to care about those things because you can get them elsewhere.
Well…this showed up in the Related section. I remember when that was a new post. Through links or comments from that (I can’t remember the details), I found proposals to grow buffalo grass, which is supposed to stay short to the point where you don’t need to mow it.
@consciousness razor #12
It does make a lot of difference, otherwise I would not bother with it. Concentration matters for the hay fever. But even more matters that I do not take copious amounts of pollen into the house on my clothing whenever I go outside. I also have skin reaction to contact with blooming grass, so I have to avoid direct contact with it. I even once got blind in one eye as a child because an awn from rye got stuck in the skin under it.
You are partially right, there are times of year when it does not matter that much (the hay fever part) because the grass outside of my garden is mown only twice a year (hay production), but for the rest of the year having as little blooming grasses in my garden as possible in the areas I frequent does matter.
I am with you on that completely. I hate monotonic green areas. I intend to convert a big part of the decorative area of my garden into “stone garden” and even bigger part of the utility garden I intend to convert into a “wood production” area with fast growing trees thus saving on fossil fuels and reducing the need to mow grass. I also do as you say, mow the lawn regularly only in frequented areas where I need to go (around the walkways etc.) and much less so in areas where I do not go. For that I need power lawn mower capable of mowing high grass.
The mown grass gets used subsequently for compost so I can grow my own potatoes (literally).
Leaves are lawn food par excellence. The worms drag them in to their holes and make fantastic compost with the benefit of creating air holes so no need to spike your lawn and improving drainage and at the same time improving water retention so you dont have to water them so much. Not Joni Mitchell I grant you but if you have a patch of lawn for ‘recreational use’ let nature help you as much as possible – it tends to know what its doing. Except for drain covers – it hasn’t worked that out yet.
@Giliell #13
You probably mean horse-chestnut leaf miner. It was a beginning problem when I was graduating on uni (i specialised in dendrology). I am not in the business anymore, however AFAIK it is even bigger problem now, and especially in warmer areas. Also south of Germany would be probably even more affected than south of Czech Republic. And in CZ whole alleyways died, hunderd-years old trees had to be felled.
And yes, removing dead leaves helps to mitigate the next-years outbreak significantly.
We’ve got grass covering about half our yard; most of the rest is native plants. The main reason for keeping the grass for now is to have space for our son to practice soccer; if we stay in the house after he’s grown out of that, we’ll probably get rid of the grass for something else. In the meantime, about the only maintenance we inflict on the lawn is semi-regular mowings with a caffeine-powered reel mower. No watering (we get a fair amount of rain) and no fertilizer. So it tends to be shaggy with brown spots and is definitely not a monoculture. As for the reel mower, aside from the environmental benefits it also allows me to mow early in the morning, before the sun hits the lawn and the mosquitoes wake up, without fear of disturbing the neighbors. The main drawback is that it sucks at mulching leaves. But raking is one of the few garden chores I actually enjoy, mostly because it’s done when the weather is cool enough for the exertion and the mosquitoes are mostly dead. And our county collects yard waste and turns it into mulch, so I don’t feel too guilty.
Giliell:
*eyeroll* Or maybe privilege has nothing at all to do with not giving a shit about grass. Or not giving a shit about sprawling grass lawns in every property to make them look like an imitation country estate. Either way.
Besides, many don’t have yards at all. Is it a “privilege” to be living in some tiny apartment and not own a lawn or any such piece of land? No, it isn’t. Where else can they get “pleasure and recreation” from a big grass field, whatever that’s supposed to involve — presumably the same public parks, recreation centers, etc., which you and anybody else can access, which wouldn’t make it a privilege they have and you don’t.
Charly:
Sure, I wasn’t accounting for that. Anyway, as I’m sure you agree and it hardly needs to be said, that’s no more an argument in favor of having monoculture grass everywhere (that you’ll have to cut to make it satisfactory) than it is in favor of having something other than grass everywhere. It’s nice when problems can be solved by doing basically nothing, and constantly maintaining the whole thing as a grass lawn certainly isn’t that type of solution, while “let nature have at it” is.
I have eliminated all of my lawn grass except for the strip between the side walk and the curb next to the street and the drought has done it’s share on what remains. Besides lawns being conventional and acceptable the in my understanding of their function around here is the front lawn is part of the display of the house to enhance the “curb appeal” and is favored by the real estate business. The other reason especially for the back yard is how it is used like for games and entertaining. Lawns are also so simple that even an uneducated teenager from anywhere can be taught to do it in 1/2 an hour. Real gardening takes practice (a lot of time), attention to detail, patience and care to bring out the beauty that is the focus and purpose of landscaping whether it is formal or “natural”
even the most natural style requires care to bring out desired effect and function, selective pruning and weeding / plant removable, plant selection and planting.
I find lawns very uninspiring and boring personally most of the time though sometimes quite inviting.
an upper Midwest prairie might be a good substitute for a plane lawn or a woodland with an appropriate sized clearing or small meadow would serve the needed social functions while also supplying ample opportunity for ecological observation and inspiration very important things to consider in landscaping. It is also possible to not confine plant choices to native plants but to consider plants from any where with the restriction that they be adaptable to the local conditions. I have always wanted to plant a garden with the restriction of only plants that would have been alive or resembled plants that were alive when dinosaurs lived.
My primary focus is always to remember that a garden is a place to be in and to look at from outside but also from inside through the windows not just t see driving past from the car seat.
uncle frogy
cr
Yeah, what would I know about that? Oh, right, I’m typing this from just such an apartment. I am painfully aware of the differences between using a public park and a garden. But yes, fortunately we were privileged enough to get a house with a garden, even though we still cannot live there. So yeah, having a garden and going all “ohhh, I have all this nice property but look how totally I can ignore it and look down on people who care about theirs*” looks quote like being a privileged asshole to me.
*Which is different from just not caring.
Instead? It’s a strange world where grass isn’t a thing that just grows naturally, even if you don’t seed it. Sure, native plants grow IN the grass. It’s not like I can let all that greenery grow up to my waist. I have to mow it down: grass, dandelions, broadleaf plantain, timothy and all (I had too google for those last two names so that’s a cool lesson in English plant names).
something something entropy something nihilism
There you go PZ.
@consciousness razor #19
Let nature have at it means either a forest, or a lot of grass that has to be either grazed or mown (not to “1-cm-height-all-the-time”, but at least twice a year) for a healthy ecosystem.
Grass does not thrive when left to its own devices, quite the opposite. It has evolved to prosper when grazed. A garden without grass is not a living garden.
If you leave a patch of garden to its own devices – which I have done and do every year – it ads to the biodiversity and beuty of the garden, but that patch in itself is not diverse for long. If I let all of my garden to its own devices it would be useless unproductive piece of land, it would very fast get overgrown with elderberries, blackberies and hazel. And later on with maple trees, birches etc. There are derelict gardens I could show you around here where happened just that. They are not gardens anymore and you could not walk through them three meters without a machette.
Wheny I talk about lawn in my garden, I am talking more about a meadow than a golf lawn. I am definitively not advocating monocultures à la US suburbs, which are useless for all purposes, including the estetic one (from my point of view).
Beatrice,
[conducts Google image search] So that’s what that is. I always just assumed it was some kind of crabgrass.
There is no garden as beautiful as one after abandonment and succession.
beatrice
But you see, the gold standard of all reasonableness is “I don’t like it”.
Charly
Don’t talk about it. There’s a patch behind our garden that the previous owners used to rent but gave up about 20 years ago. It’s stinging nettles, brambles and vines that slowly suffocate the trees. It will be a nightmare to get that back in shape again and hopefully save some of the trees.
Yep, the amount of naturalistic fallacy in this thread is staggering. Nature isn’t inherently “good” at anything. There are landscapes and ecosystems that evolved alongside our use of it. Let “nature have it back” and you condemn many species to extinction. See the Lüneburg Heath for example.
Seriously, these conversations are always so confusing.
When I say grass, I don’t mean one single type of grass (the one used to seed fancy lawns), I mean grasses plural.
@Giliell #27
We have similar park, Podyjí National Park where long ago developed artificial grasslands areas have to be still mown (manually) and grazed in order to protect endangered species.
When talking large scale, we as a species cannot let nature to its own devices anymore, not without doing even more damage than we already did.
This makes zero sense to me. I’m complaining about a monoculture grass lawn on practically every property, which some people seem to think they desperately need if they own a house (or business) with some amount of land around it. This may be much more typical of people in the US than Germany — never been there, and I simply claim to know nothing whatsoever about it not that it doesn’t matter.
You’re saying that if we don’t have that, there’s some danger that species will go extinct? I find that very hard to believe. For one thing, they’re not actually in the same environment as just a few centuries ago, much less as it was many thousands of years before human beings started treating the entire planet like it was theirs to shape as they saw fit. But would it be inherently bad if any did go extinct? Why? It would be a fallacy to say that because those species exist (now, in an environment we made no less), it’s therefore good that they exist, so we should be doing something to ensure their existence. So something other than that better be the reason why we’re trying to protect such species. But if you just don’t give a shit about what nature does with itself, you’re not in fact saying it’s “good” that it does whatever it does.
The good part (for you) is that you may not have to do any work, and you may not be creating problems (for yourself or others) by, for example, having a big monoculture of grass that causes allergic reactions and so forth. And if for whatever reason you are concerned about protecting other species or biodiversity itself, then that enormous amount of grass you’re cultivating is in fact taking up some of the finite amount of space/resources that other species can’t use. That grass cultivar, which doesn’t seem to be all that useful for very much anyway, is certainly not in any danger of going extinct. So which species are, and how would planting grass help?
@consciousnes razor #30
Do you actually bother to read what Giliell wrote and click the link she provided? To me it seems like you are arguing with your own head.
cr
I don’t. Maybe read what I wrote.
And if you’re wondering what I mean by naturalistic fallacy:
Charly, as I said, I can’t make sense of it, but I do try. Where is the staggering amount of naturalistic fallaciousness in this thread?
I have no idea how the Lüneburg Heath is supposed to be relevant to the monoculture grass lawns you see in the US in any suburban area (for example, but also in many other areas). I thought we were talking about things like that: mowing lawns, raking leaves and so forth. Does our environment somehow depend critically on the mowing of uniform green grassy monoculture lawns, and would things be worse somehow if we did it less? Extremely doubtful. I don’t see a problem in asking ourselves whether we should be so occupied with doing things like that.
The problem is, that even non-monoculture lawn has to be mown. You really do not read what people write.
Sorry, Giliell, #33 was cross-posted. That’s not very staggering in my book, but okay. I should at least concede that those formulations are anthropomorphizing “nature” in a somewhat misleading way, but it seems like there a reasonable ways of formulating the same basic ideas without engaging in any fallacies. So if you wouldn’t have a problem with some improved formulations, then it doesn’t seem like you have a genuine problem.
Let me offer a couple of translations:
Don’t work if you don’t have to. If it would suffice (for you) whenever things do whatever they’ll naturally do (i.e., without your intervention), that’s the easiest approach for you to take. Your time/money/resources/etc. can be spent on something else which is more useful.
Weeds native to your location will grow just fine at your location, without your intervention. You don’t have to be upset that they are growing there, because they’re called “weeds” which are supposed to be (or have the connotation of being) bad or undesirable. There is nothing to worry about, and you will not be lacking for things that can grow on your property, if you don’t try to eradicate all “weeds” by planting a single type of grass everywhere.
I’m reading this, but why assume the only alternative is a non-monoculture “lawn”? Xeriscaping may not involve any grasses of any type. Or you can have sidewalks or stone/gravel/whatever paths, if the point is to walk in certain places that would otherwise be overgrown. In some places, if it’s necessary, you might clear out brush or remove tree saplings or plant a vegetable garden or whatever, but none of that is “mowing a lawn.”
Wow, that’s the best piece of gardening advice ever! Why, why, why didn’t I just enjoy all those stinging nettles, especially those at the children’s eye-height? They’re just the best thing that I could have! They do grow nicely and to an amazing size. Also the brambles. And the moss. Let’s not forget about the moss. Not as excitingly painful as the rest but for sure there was a nice even moss monoculture and you don’t even have to mow it!
As determined by you, I suppose.
Damn, I forgot: this is a strictly US Americans only blog where the only valid perspective is the US American one because we all know you’re the only place that matters.
Just to explain it to you: The Lüneburg Heath is an example of a centuries old landscape that was formed by human intervention and that harbours a huge range of biodiversity. Without continued human tending it would change drastically and that unique biodiversity would be lost. Now, it seems like you think that only animals that live in really wild primary forests and such deserve some consideration, but many people think that it’s not some poor butterfly’s fault that it evolved to fit a human tended landscape.
Charly
Not to mention that thoughtful gardening can also help wildlife, for example by planting flowers that will bloom when agricultural plants don’t as to help the bees. or drystone walls that provide habitats for lizards or woodpiles that give hedgehogs shelter…
Oftentimes the most successful weeds are invasive species, which can wreak havoc on the native plants without intervention. Where I live, English ivy and kudzu are invasive, highly successful species that crowd out native species and kill trees if left unchecked. Should we just let those grow without intervention?
Weeds will grow just fine. But if I don’t mow the yard, the City will do so, and charge me for their contracted out services.
Apparently the writer of a blog devoted to “social justice” and the people who comment on his blog are more interested in discussing leaves and weeds than in addressing the concerns of people of color and the values of basic human decency and of reparations. I’d say that it’s distasteful but I’m used to the voices of people of color getting ignored.
For Mr. Myers and all the other white people who comment here and wonder about questions like “what should I do to acknowledge my privilege?” and wish to actually act on the human decency they claim to have, the real discussion on the practical applications of the principles they say they hold dear is over here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/11/02/i-am-a-racist-too/#comments
That is the topic of this thread troll. You want to berate us, do it on topic.
So the real concerns of people of color get dismissed as trolling. Typical.
Nerd, I don’t think “troll” is appropriate here. Consider this an intervention like a Black Lives Matter protest, because that’s the message. krsone made some great points in that thread, and the fact that almost no one has responded at all while this thread has been active is, reasonably, a case for saying that lawns matter more, which should horrify us (it does me, anyway). Yes, it verges on a DearMuslima, but given the specific complaint made – “this thread matters more to you than the other”- it’s hard to argue against in this case.
krsone #40
How’s your garden doing?
Caitie
Yes, in between cooking, cleaning, taking the kids to bed and preparing tomorrow’s classes I chose to spend a little time on a thread that was not, for once, totally dedicated to social justice. Apparently that makes me a horrible human being. I’m also, right now NOT commenting on a million threads about women’s rights. Does that mean that I care more about grass than women? And yes, I’m sick and tired about how every single person seems to think they can dedicate what I spend any single minute of my time on.
Giliell #45
Don’t worry.
Like the gardening thing, it’s all about the USA.
Right, and “plant grass everywhere” is great advice for people with grass allergies. I didn’t know we were offering that sort of advice. So this is a naturalistic fallacy or not?
No, please don’t suppose that. It’s useful to you to have more time/money/resources available to do whatever you want. It’s not useful to you to waste it on stuff that doesn’t need to be done, in cases when it would suffice (for you, to your satisfaction, whatever you may have wanted) to simply let things do whatever they’ll do. It’s certainly not a profound point to make, but it ought to be completely obvious and uncontroversial.
Again: naturalistic fallacy or not? Insinuating that I’m trying to impose my values on you, about what I determine is more useful as compared to what you determine (which isn’t the idea at all), is not pointing to a naturalistic fallacy.
Yes, my failure to get what you’re saying is totally implying that you don’t matter. Maybe this thread itself is implying that too, by simply being about something other than wherever you wanted to take it. If you’ve already gotten yourself into the mood of thinking that way, there may not be not much I can say now.
Do you think that’s supposed to be analogous to planting grassy suburban lawns all over the US? What exactly is it that makes you suspect (against all the evidence I can think of) that perhaps planting all of those lawns is somehow encouraging biodiversity in the US? Or do you not suspect that? And if not, what is the point supposed to be?
Where did I imply that? The fact that I can’t think of good reasons for planting the same few species of grass all over the place … well, what does that actually seem like to you, or how did you get from A to B?
“Yes, in between cooking, cleaning, taking the kids to bed and preparing tomorrow’s classes I chose to spend a little time on a thread that was not, for once, totally dedicated to social justice. Apparently that makes me a horrible human being. I’m also, right now NOT commenting on a million threads about women’s rights. Does that mean that I care more about grass than women? And yes, I’m sick and tired about how every single person seems to think they can dedicate what I spend any single minute of my time on.”
How you individually spend your time is your choice, but the collective response of the people who write and comment here shows clearly that they’re more concerned with gardening than with the struggles of people of color. Which is nice for you, Beckies and Johns St Johns. Here I thought that some of you might not make it about you, your time and your gardens but actually shut up and listen about the concerns of justice for people of color.
But go on, enjoy talking about your garden. I’ll be careful not to step into it while I’m actually promoting something that matters. Because it was obviously all about you, and not about a blog where white people ask what they can do to acknowledge their privilege but ignore the answer that people of color give them.
I do. NOBODY should tell people on a secondary thread they must respond to their posts on the first thread. I consider that arrogantly out of line, and therefore trolling.
It says nothing about the quality of what they said on the first thread.
Sometimes I don’t feel like responding to certain threads.
cr
No, and I’ll be damned if you can reasonably demonstrate where I made that point.
Well, if you were interested in what I was saying you could have asked for clarification instead of flogging the dead strawhorse that anybody here’s promoting single species perfect lawn monocultures.
First of all, people have given you multiple reasons as to why “let things do whatever they’ll do” isn’t actually working well. Second, you have never asked what I actually want. You simply supposed that since you deem the results superior or sufficient it would be good for me, clearly implying that apparently I cannot be trusted with my time/resource management.
Well, ask krsone, they agree with you!
krsone
For which you have a data point of exactly two threads. I’m underwhelmed.
Cupcake, listening to people of colour does not mean listening to you personally every single second of my time. I didn’t come into that thread and demand people stop talking about racial justice and start talking about gardens.
That would be nice. Because right now you’re being nothing but an asshole.
Now that I’ve read the comments in the other thread, I agree with many of the things you said there. Any points I might eventually address would take a very long time to sort out, since as you know, you made some extremely broad and expansive claims in it. Not immediately saying something there (or whatever you expected me to do) doesn’t clearly show anything about me, except that I haven’t been (and didn’t know I should be) working on your timetable and trying to satisfy your (apparently very limited) patience concerning my interactions on this blog.
I don’t garden, nor do I own a garden. So, would you be able to give a reasonably accurate explanation about why am I commenting in this thread, which you claim is “concerned with gardening”? There are important environmental issues tied into all of this, as you can tell if you’ve bothered to read the thread. You shouldn’t think it’s merely about gardening or just some trivial hobby, which white people supposedly care more about than they do black people. All of us should spend our time being concerned about many different things, including but not limited to both racism and the environment, because there is more than one thing to be concerned about. It’s not a simple choice of picking one or another, since everybody ought to be concerned about many important issues like those. Whether you realize it or not, the environment certainly does matter to you, as it does to any person anywhere, now and throughout everyone’s (often miserable) history and for as long as there going to be any people. So don’t fucking tell me that shit doesn’t fucking matter.
I’ve tried to say it clearly. I won’t argue the point further, if it’s obvious you’re just finding an excuse to take offense at anything you can dream up. There are certain things that you do want, which may be obtained without so much effort on your part, which is useful to you since you can direct that effort to any other arbitrary thing that you could possibly desire. It’s not about my trust, me, what I would do, or whatever I think — leave me out of it, please. You can “let nature help you as much as possible” (note: I don’t call myself “nature”!) as the supposedly fallacious/offending statement put it. When it is possible and would help you, you can take that kind of approach to time/resource management, as it is by construction the easier approach to take. If not, then not. There’s nothing in any of that to get worked up about.
Your first comment was rude and literally started with *eyeroll*, but you want to pretend to be surprised if someone takes offense? It seemed like you came here for an argument.
but then of course it would no longer be a garden which is by differentiation a contrivance, entirely man made in general usage.
we humans as well as many other animals have been shaping our environment either directly like we do and creatures like beavers and termites or indirectly like all those who do not deliberately alter it.
also I would define weeds a little differently. many are pioneer species which can sprout in very hostile niches and in succession help change them. many of the most problematic ones I find locally are also none native.
one thing they all seem to share is they are judged out of place
like a live Oak coming up in the middle of the driveway
uncle frogy
OMG
oak
I haven’t checked on my wee oak since … July
first light tomorrow
krsone
From me as a person active in this thread and not the other one, please consider this:
For me, I am sorry that it seems that not commenting on something conveys the message I am not interested in your problems and solutions to them. I tend not to comment on topics about racism too much, because as a white person in a country where POC are in single digit %, I do not have too much to say. I have little direct experience, no usable advice, no real knowledge. Therefore what I do in such topics is to read what POC have to say and try to learn from it. So please do not feel ignored when nobody responds to you. It might just mean they cannot argue with what you say.
I mostly only comment when I think I know what I am talking about. Otherwise I “shut up and listen” which is a good advice given to me on this very blog, in topics about social justice no less.
Also recently I personally have been slightly exhausted by social justice topics and I will probably shut down internet for a week completely.
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consciousnes razor
I have to assume you have never build or tended a garden bigger than a few square meters in biologically rich area. I have been tending garden most of my life, over thirty years. You are talking nonsense, there is no other way to put it.
Even stone garden needs tending and if it is big enough, you might not need “mow lawn” but you will spend equal time doing something else. Untended piece of land is not a garden by definition.
I have a huge garden. I want to use my garden: I want to use it to reduce my carbon footprint, to grow fresh vegetables and fruits, to have areas where I can relax, areas that are pleasing to the eye and areas where insects live, even netlle patches for butterflies, patches of stone where lizzards can hibernate through winter and areas where birds can nest and patches where endangered flowers bloom.
If I want all that, I will have to mow lawn to some extent. Not a monoculture of St. Augustine, not as much as in US American suburban areas, but never zero.
I could of course spend the time telling other people how they should spend their time, but that would help neither me, nor the critters inhabiting my garden.
does anyone want to define terms?
lawn
garden
yard
front yard
back yard
balcony
balcony with some basil growing in a pot of dirt
#8 Charly / #10 Marcus:
For a grassy lawn, you’d be better off with sheep – goats like scrub. Sorry to be pedantic, but my wife’s a goat freak. Doesn’t really matter much to us, since our front yard is a canal. Actually, Marcus, you implied that it’s already working – have you gotten goats to do your mowing for you?
#57 Chigau: it did take me (a transplanted American) a while to realize that in UK English, a garden is what Americans call a lawn or yard.
cr
Let me get this straight: You have no expertise, interest or experience in the subject matter.
You further keep implying to know that
without ever having established the situation as it is nor what I actually desire, nor what I actually do.
You keep ignoring the points raised like biodiversity, invasive species, basic safety concerns and so on and so on in favour of arguing against monoculture lawns as if anybody here had supported them.
The term “mansplain” doesn’t even get close to what you’re doing.
@ Tabby Lavalamp, 3
Not really. Lawns can be made from species other than traditional turfgrasses (Bouteloua gracilis and curtipendula spring to mind here in California, along with a dozen others), and often serve a human need (sport, cooling soil, creating walkable groundcovers) or environmental purposes (erosion control on mostly flat planes, a barrier against weeds, absorb rain to reduce wasteful and potentially harmful run off while contributing to the water table).
No. In horticulture, a weed is any plant you–as gardener–don’t want there. Most are invasive and not endemic to the area, outcompete natives, create fire hazards, clog up waterways, poison local fauna, and insufficiently protect against erosion.
Also, lawns don’t have to be monocultures nor high-maintenance nor dependent on excessive amounts of water and fertilizer. Far from it. They can be a mix of herbaceous annuals and perennials, along with a variety of mutually compatible and cooperation grasses and sedges, politely self-sowing but not becoming invasive, enriching the soil, and creating (if unmown or infrequently sheared) a fairly useful habitat for smaller creatures. Not all native woody plants and trees perform well amongst / above traditional and non-traditional “turf,” but plenty appreciate the benefits.
Charly:
Fair enough. I’m certain that in many areas, “grasses” (of all sorts, which isn’t equivalent to a US “lawn”) will inevitably be part of environmentally-friendly gardens or other tracts of land — not necessarily the whole thing taken over by a single species, as is often the case in US residential/commercial areas, but perhaps a very significant part. In fact, that’s true of where I live, and I haven’t meant to say there’s any problem with that. I’m sorry if anything I said was ambiguous or confusing about that point, but it should’ve been fairly clear when I said as much in my first comment at #12.
Giliell:
Well, no, it’s not none. But anyway, interest and experience in the subject matter doesn’t require that I own property and use it in the problematic ways that I’ve been trying to describe.
Suppose I didn’t own a car, never drove a car in my entire life, and knew basically nothing about how cars work. Suppose also that I was telling you about how burning fossil fuels in car engines is causing some of our environmental problems. Would you reply the same way to me then? Do any of the relevant facts depend on whether or not I own a car or use a car or have an “interest” in cars? Basically the only thing I would need to know about cars, for these purposes, is how they cause the damage they are causing. If I had no other “expertise,” no “interest” in driving one myself, nor any amount of “experience” driving them, it would matter precisely this much in a conversation like that: not one fucking bit.
I could also suggest, if I know of any, other modes of transportation that people could turn to, alternative approaches to urban planning and social organization which would reduce the need for driving, and so forth. And it still makes zero fucking difference whether I have ever owned/used a car, whether I know how it functions, etc. I can perfectly well understand all of that now in the real world, where it is the case that I own a car, use it, know shit about it, etc. It’s not very hard at all to get that shit like that is irrelevant.
So, do you have that straight now?
Surprisingly, that’s correct: it’s nowhere near what I’ve actually been doing, because you’re being ridiculous.
Marc Abian
This is very much a matter of personal aesthetics, and also suggests that the areas you’ve seen abandoned gardens are different than the ones I’ve seen them in. An abandoned garden can be beautiful, but it can also be a mess of Japanese knotweed and abandoned shopping trolleys and litter. It seems pretty damn condescending to tell people they don’t or shouldn’t like the sort of garden they say they like
consciousness razor
You could, but what you’ve been doing in this thread is more the equivalent of telling people that they don’t need cars, regardless of their circumstances, and that driving involves effort so they should walk everywhere instead.
For me, a lawn is mostly something I have because I rent and my contract doesn’t let me dig up the garden, but it’s also somewhere I can sit and read or study, or do yoga or tai-chi or fighting practice. It’s also pretty low maintenance – mowing is a mild nuisance, but I’ve generally found it more pleasant and less effort than cutting back bushes and climbers, or weeding patios, or clearing out patches of nettles – and it’s definitely less effort than growing vegetables
How does one misread so badly that “There is no garden as beautiful as one after abandonment and succession” becomes “tell[ing] people they don’t or shouldn’t like the sort of garden they say they like”? Lighten up mate.
cr
Which isn’t what you’ve been doing. You’re the equivalent of some urban hipster who has everything he needs within walking distance or easily reachable by functioning public transport and who can do his grocery shopping in cute little gentrified shops because it’s only him who tells a rural person with a 20 miles commute and a family of 4 to feed that they don’t need a car. You’Re the person who knows so little about combustion engines that you tell people to fill water into their cars because hydrogen is an efficient fuel.
I think that’S like the third time I mention this:
You never established my starting point (let’s call it point A), never asked what I wanted (let’s call it point B), but thought you had some good advice for me for how to get from A to B while amply demonstrating that you don’t have the first clue about gardening. It’S still a mystery to me why you thought you had some valuable insight into this apart from the fact that you’Re so full of yourself there’s no room anymore for some self evaluation.
Holms
Well, maybe it’s because it’s been phrased as a statement of objective truth and not as a matter of personal opinion.
#65
Cool, the next time I see someone say “________ is the best band ever” I’ll be sure to let them know how ‘pretty damn condescending’ they are for not phrasing an opinion as a statement of objective truth.
Jefrir is not the only one that could afford to lighten up.
…
That’s an opinion, by the way.
Some people could afford being less of an asshole.
The funny (to me) thing is, I was thinking that of you but went with ‘lighten up’ because I didn’t feel like being an arsehole.