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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

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HAVE I EVER TOLD YOU HOW STUPID I THINK LAWNS ARE…...?

After 16 years of living without a lawn in ANGWIN, CA

I was not really ready for the reality of a patch of grass surrounding our house in Tennessee.

In California, we had about an acre of vineyard, orchard, berry-patches, vegetable garden and nut grove, instead. It was a lot of work….but there was always the knowledge that we would GET SOMETHING back for the effort. It’s just not the same with a lawn…...

You’ll note that my neighbor has just mowed his lawn, making my (otherwise reasonably presentable) grasspatch look a bit overgrown and shaggy. This is not something that can be ignored in a subdivision where there’s a code specifying how your property must be kept up in order not to lower the value of those surrounding. But, that’s not the biggest problem. Look closely at the picture—see those long and rank grass blades here and there? Those, my friends, are WEEDS.

And it isn’t just weedy grasses…...there are forbs (broad-leafed plants) as well. Note this nasty breed hanging over the sidewalk.

If you’re wondering why I go on and on about weeds - the inevitable result of having a lawn, after all - let me tell you that we’re paying a lawn care company to keep the grass fertilized, aerated, and sprayed for weeds. This lawn costs me $500.00/year and I still have to mow it myself. The guy who comes around and claims to do the work visited us on the first and the 10th of August, and we still have patches of weeds like this

I suspect that the guy sprays individual weeds with he little pump sprayer - I can find one here and there with purple stems that looks kind of sick. What he really needs to do is to broadcast the spray on the entire lawn, so that the little ones are killed before they look like those above. There is particularly no excuse for the broad-leafed varieties - since there have long been sprays that kill them selectively. Furthermore, the “weed and feed” preparations will even prevent the GERMINATION of weed seeds that blow in from the neighbors, or from the unkept fields nearby…..there is no hint of any such thing being laid onto my lawn.

At this point, I’m tempted to make some giant enlargements of these photographs to post on my front lawn…...along with a large sign identifying the lawn care company as the one who charges $41.00/month to provide me with the weedy mess that surrounds our home place…...

I’m sure I won’t be doing any such thing very soon, and I’m still stuck with mowing all this herbage…..I DETEST mowing lawns, HATE and EXECRATE this instrument of my torture.

While I have friends who profess to love cutting the grass, I find that every one of them owns a riding mower and runs it around on an enormous flat expanse of lawn without flower beds and the complications their edges introduce. And so far, not one of them lives in a climate where temperatures in the 90s are matched with equivalent humidities.

What IS the purpose of a lawn, anyhow…...? In all fairness, I must admit that when I’m done—when I’ve stopped sweating; when my face isn’t the peculiar shade of red that it gets for an hour or so after I’m finished; when I’ve recovered from the dehydration and weakness—the lawn looks very nice