1039
It's not enough to touch grass
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A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
"wasteland" is a bit strong. Non-native grass is not ideal, but we could do far worse. Good on you for improving your land. Let's not force everyone to be perfect, as many will just give up.
I think the focus on perfection leads to poor mental models and outcomes.
Focus on perfection? It's harder to maintain an ugly cut grass lawn than to just let it go wild and plant some native grasses/plants to overtake it.
I really hard to play ball or have other activities on a non grass surface and many people particularly enjoy the look of a nice cut lawn. Both can coexist.
Ya, grass isn't inherently a bad thing. A lawn where I live in some serious desert is grotesquely wasteful, an appreciated lawn in other regions not so bad.
It's not the grass, it's capitalism. It's the eradication of native species for profit, and the spreading of fossil fuel derived fertilizers and poisons to support conspicuous consumption (real-estate values, golf, keeping up with the Joness, etc) that is problematic.
Except most grass, especially border areas like front lawns and street medians as well as corporate-owned lawns like around a drive-thru or suburban offices, gets zero use. It's one thing to have a dedicated play area in a yard or park that's cut grass; it's another thing to have the entire property as cut grass.
Everyone in my neighborhood has large cut grass lawns. There's mostly retired folks here are very few children. I spend a lot of time outside yet can literally count on one hand the number of times I have seen people out in those yards for a purpose other than cutting the grass. If you're not going to use it at least let the dandelions grow so the bees have something to eat!
And the fucking noise from lawnmowers and whipper snippers all day long.
I'd like to relax and read a book outside, on my messy lawn but all my neighbours do is come outside, make noise for a couple of hours and once they have a 'perfect' lawn they fucking go back inside.
Nah, manicured lawns can't coexist with healthy ecosystems. They're hugely wasteful in general. There are alternatives that are equally nice to run on like clover and many areas have their own soft ground cover that's native. The best thing about native plants is that they're almost always lower maintenance. It just doesn't make sense to keep wasting water and other resources on lawns imo.
I recently let my garden grow wild and it's crazy how many flowers came up on their own. Now I've got all kinds of little critters and birds I hardly ever see elsewhere. The only thing I pull are goat head weeds because fuck those things lmao
Really hard to play ball. Really is this the best defence for manicured lawns?
Have a picnic, play ball, participate in activities, or a plethora of other things. Pick one. If you don't want a lawn, don't have one. If you like play fetch with your dogs in weeds and flowers, you do you. As mentioned, both can exist. It happens all of the time.
In my area, ticks and rodents would move in. Not great for the things I do in my yard.
Native Grass are great, in general and in some areas of my yard, but not everywhere.