Lawn

 You’re familiar with the food not lawns movement, yes?

As much as 50 million acres of land in the U.S. consists of manicured lawns, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. And all that space provides little to no habitat for important pollinators and other wildlife.

In fact, it does quite a bit of harm, through the use of chemical fertilizers and nearly 70 million pounds of pesticides each year. Additionally, irrigation for lawns uses nearly 7 trillion gallons of water, and lawnmowers consume 200 million gallons of gas annually. That’s a lot of resources for largely unused space. (source)

Grass (and I'm not talking about the smokable variety) takes up 2% of the land in the continental US, making it our top irrigated "crop."

Yesterday, while out and about, I saw my very first vegetable garden yard! I had been on the verge of ranting about folks with treeless, putting green front lawns, when we came across this stunning front yard. No, I didn’t get a pic (was driving by) but it was glorious.

As you may already know, I’m not a gardener. That’s Jen and Oni’s gig. They plant loads of veggies and flowers and we all plant trees. Sadly, at this point, we’re about out of room for trees.

It’d be awesome if we had more land. We could have rows of bean poles, eggplant, cucumber, broccoli, spinach, apple and pear trees. For me though, it’s really all about the trees.

I honestly do understand that, if you have children or dogs, it’s important to have a safe, outdoor space for them to play. Cool, cool BUT does it need to look like a sanitized green? Wouldn’t a nice meadow with bee and bird attracting wildflowers do the trick and be much less effort to maintain?

Here in Valhalla, the grassy area along the seawall is always kept way too short. Just as the dandelions are starting to come up, the city sends out the monster tractor mowers to crewcut the hell out of the strip. Sure, beach roses are planted here and there but, c’mon, a little more color and life is needed!