To Mow or Not to Mow

To Mow or Not to Mow

Spring has sprung with a vengeance, and a lawn mower soundtrack has punctuated many of my excursions outside this past month. Grass cutting season is here again, and the competition has begun to see who can have the greenest, neatest, most weed free patch of organic wasteland in the neighborhood.

According to the National Wildlife Federation, Americans use 30 to 60 percent of the potable municipal water, and about 67 million pounds of synthetic pesticides annually for lawn care. My question is, to what purpose?

I have never understood the passion for neat, obsessively trimmed, unnaturally green squares of barren lawn. I’ve always wanted to live on land that was a nurturing place for wildlife, not a hazardous waste site where eating a poisoned insect could kill a bird, or grazing on herbicide drenched plants could snuff out an animal’s life.

We are on this earth as stewards of the planet, not invaders perpetuating an occupation. The point is to live in harmony with nature, not beat the planet into submission. It’s not a war.

My husband and I try to garden for flora and fauna. A 150 by 25 foot section of our yard has gone natural with native wildflowers (some might consider them weeds), trees and shrubs. We wouldn’t let a lawn chemical company anywhere near our lawn, and also try to plant vegetation that benefits wildlife in some way, either by food or shelter. The National Wildlife Federation has certified our yard as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat site.

To become a Backyard Wildlife Habitat we had to document with pictures and site maps that our property provided food, water, nesting areas, and cover for wildlife. We also had to promise to garden in an environmentally friendly way by mulching, reducing lawn areas, restoring native plants, and having a chemical free lawn. Brush piles dot our acre as cover for the critters that live here.

Sometimes, with all the wildlife our yard attracts, our back yard resembles a scene from Wild Kingdom. We’d have it no other way. I am so glad to live in a neighborhood with no anal “Association” issuing orders on how to maintain our own property.

So, this spring, when the frenzy of the neighborhood lawn competition threatens to overcome you, remember this quote by Rachel Carson, author of “Silent Spring” and one of the twentieth century’s greatest naturalists.

“The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.”