GopherChucks
Member
A green grass lawn is pretty typical in front of an American home, but do you know where it originated?
16th Century France. Aristocrats left huge swathes of precious arable land around their estates empty, to demonstrate their grotesque wealth: "I have so much land, I can afford to waste it on empty fields of grass instead of feeding livestock, growing grain or raising vegetables". This, of course, came to an abrupt end in France with the implementation of the guillotine by starving peasants
Middle class American idiots ape this European aristocratic tradition without even realizing why they do so.
Lawn fertilizers derived from fossil fuels. These cause algae blooms from runoff, destroying aquatic life
Pesticides and herbicides that also kill beneficial insects and plants.
Moronic gas power lawnmowers. The engines in these machines are ridiculously inefficient, produce a huge amount of air pollution, and are obnoxiously loud.
Hundreds of thousands of gallons of fresh water (an increasingly scarce resource) wasted on vanity and idiocy.
OR
You could choose to replace the grass with a flowering ground-cover plant, such as red clover, and never need to fertilize, spray or irrigate again. You could choose to spread hardy wildflower seeds, and provide forage to pollinating insects that are dying out.
You might even till the whole thing up, and grow herbs and vegetables.
16th Century France. Aristocrats left huge swathes of precious arable land around their estates empty, to demonstrate their grotesque wealth: "I have so much land, I can afford to waste it on empty fields of grass instead of feeding livestock, growing grain or raising vegetables". This, of course, came to an abrupt end in France with the implementation of the guillotine by starving peasants
Middle class American idiots ape this European aristocratic tradition without even realizing why they do so.
Lawn fertilizers derived from fossil fuels. These cause algae blooms from runoff, destroying aquatic life
Pesticides and herbicides that also kill beneficial insects and plants.
Moronic gas power lawnmowers. The engines in these machines are ridiculously inefficient, produce a huge amount of air pollution, and are obnoxiously loud.
Hundreds of thousands of gallons of fresh water (an increasingly scarce resource) wasted on vanity and idiocy.
OR
You could choose to replace the grass with a flowering ground-cover plant, such as red clover, and never need to fertilize, spray or irrigate again. You could choose to spread hardy wildflower seeds, and provide forage to pollinating insects that are dying out.
You might even till the whole thing up, and grow herbs and vegetables.
