I find grass so useless. Every boomer parent I've known is just obsessed with it, too. They think that not having a green, green monoculture lawn means you've failed morally or something, and that it's how they show the neighborhood how responsible they are. One GF's dad came over to our random Winconsin lawn of grass and weeds and strawberries and was "I WOULD JUST PULL THIS ALL UP AND START OVER". Uh.... no?
Then I had an across the street neighbor (guy with a bumper sticker "I've never seen a FLAG burned at a GUN SHOW") who would mow his lawn every single day with a riding mower. You couldn't even tell what part he had done yet. I went out of town for two weeks and he rode over and mowed my lawn. I left my backyard just go and it was awesome... after a few years, birds started nesting in the middle of the prairie, and I had flowers growing I'd never seen anywhere else.
I went out of town for two weeks and he rode over and mowed my lawn.
This happened to me too.
are so violently obsessed with inch-high fuzzy green rectangles of obedience that they'll sometimes invade your property to make more of them, overriding any of their own pretenses about the sanctity of private property in the process.I think he thought he was doing me a favor, but really was just jerking off his lawn obsession. Same guy told me one time "HEY i saw a bear in your driveway and I was gonna come run it off so it didn't mess with your garbage but it left!" I was uh, okay... no, please don't come confront a bear in my driveway. Dude drank light beer all day.
In my case, it was deliberate aggression because I had told him, in person and to his face, that those were protected native plants and I had a legal right to have them on my property.
But
"did me a favor" with a disgusting little smirk when I confronted him about it later. He even implied that I got nothing to prove what he did because I don't have the surveillance state shit that he has on his side of the fence.
Did you sue? I'd have been livid enough to try to sue. IANAL, but at a minimum I would hope that would be trespassing.
I doubt that I could have demonstrated real harm, or even proved that he did it. I got back into town a week later and my brother, who had been watching the house, said "huh, the guy across the street mowed the front yard".
I'm 52 and hate mowing yards. Most other people my age are also obsessed with their lawns or simply "enjoy getting out and working on the yard"
There few things worse than doing yard work. I think dying is one of them, maybe.
Anyways, yeah we have a yard. We try to keep various bushes and wildflowers as we can. We go as log as possible in early spring to not mow and get all the clover and stuff to bring the bees and like insects over.
As for mowing, I pay someone 50 dollars every 2 weeks to keep it not looking like crap.
My father-in-law, who lives with us, used to do most of the gardening and lawn stuff. He is too old now to do any of it. He's always trying to get the rest of the people in the house to do stuff in the yard. I keep telling him "you know you are the only one who really gives a shit on how 'nice' the yard looks. My only goal is to keep the city and neighbors off our back, that's it.'
EDIT: Also neighbors seem intent on having a single uniform grass breed and obsessed with having no weeds. Nah, I have all the grasses and weeds. I have a neighbor down the street who is always just HAND PULLING weeds out of her lawn. Like hours and hours of it. I mean.. wat
It seems to be something that retired people love, to keep them active and give them something to do (a sense of purpose besides grandchildren?). I don't mind yardwork myself, but I don't feel like it's virtuous or something. I also understand that a chemical-sodden monoculture isn't really the best for humans and wildlife.
My mother used to try to get us... oh, she still does... to come "PULL WEEDS". As kids it made sense, like okay, she wants us to get away from the video games and be outside and do whatever she's saying, but at this point...
i never understood why american front yards dont have fences. just a barren wasteland of green from the curb to the front windows. fence your garden in!
They all seem obsessed with plastic grass now which is even worse.
My garden is mostly weeds. Haven't cut it in 15 years. I pretend to be a trendsetting wild gardener, but really I'm just a lazy bastard.
I want to make a short film / animation where aliens are approaching earth, the only thing we know about the aliens is that they plan to destroy all life and replace it with their own twisted creation. A few minutes of typical story follows, heroes assemble, go to fight, etc. The heroes lose and the ending scene shows that the aliens have succeeded and replaced all the diverse life on Earth with a perfectly manicured lawn that covers the entire planet. A biological wasteland.
I prefer a garden full of grown weeds than a clean grass cutted one. If a weed can grow and prosper without me watering it once a day, I think they deserve the right to be there more than anything my father ever planted on his yard that would die without getting water for 3 days or too much rain water.
if I didn't take care of my lawn, I'd have invasive Bermuda grass getting into everything and it would kill all the other plants. I've also looked into overseeding with mini clover but I've read that it doesn't tolerate traffic well. open to any suggestions as I'm fighting a losing battle with fescue and the damn Bermuda.
A few options. Cover the entire lawn for an extended period of time with a bunch of tarps or cardboard so no sunlight reaches the grass. Kill the entire thing. Start over with native seeds. Or roto till the entire thing
For me personally Bermuda grass never stood a chance against all the clover, dandelions, cheeseweed, purslane, tall flatsedge, and broadleaf plantain that make up a lot of what used to be the lawn. Some of those are invasive technically but at least rabbits come to eat the dandelions and plantains
Few symptoms of old fashioned boomer-standard death cult mentality are as insidious and understated as the obsession with inch-high fuzzy green obedience rectangles and their hatred of viable ecosystems.
Reading all the comments and everyone is like not my yard , its full of flowers but for some reason I don't see any bees or butterfly 🤷♂️
