The lawn mower guy came today, like he does every now and then, freaking my cats out and sending them scurrying for cover. (Obviously they believed me when I said it was a cat-eating monster looking for lunch.) Since we don't own a riding mower and we have a really big lawn, it makes good sense to pay someone else to bring his over and do it for us. But what doesn't make sense is having a lawn at all.
Deep down you may think that the greener your lawn, the more adept you are at taming the Earth and showing it who's boss. That's faulty thinking, since the lawn's very existence represents a meaningless waste of time and money. Even worse, its maintenance delivers an ongoing blow to our environment: Estimates suggest that nearly 17 million gallons of gasoline are
spent each summer in the fueling of lawn-care equipment in
the United States. That's approximately 50% more than the amount spilled in the Exxon Valdez incident that had everybody wailing, until they forgot all about it. And the continual use of pesticides and fertilizers has been shown to
contribute to global warming. Then there's the watering...
It's a crazy business when you stop and think about it, which few people do. Instead, imagine if all those lawns were vegetable gardens.
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| Gordon Studer |
It's a crazy business when you stop and think about it, which few people do. Instead, imagine if all those lawns were vegetable gardens.
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