The Evil That Lawns Do
Why lawns are the enemy and everything that is wrong with America.
Lawns and me? We got off on the wrong foot back during the height of the Disco era when, I — a non-funky, music-playing white boy growing up in Paterson, New Jersey — was routinely Get-offa-my-lawn-ed by a grumpy, older neighbor upon retrieving balls. And by the time the bang-bang boogie said up-jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie to beat, my father began exploiting his in-house supply of child labor to mow ours. Worse than having my calves assaulted by twig shrapnel was looking down to see my previously white Puma high-tops now ready for Saint Patrick’s Day. Some years later — when Vanilla Ice went and gentrified a perfectly good Queen song — I joined the maintenance crew at The Passaic Valley Water Commission where I was paid six bucks an hour to push a lawnmower and swing a weedwhacker.
This is when I was fully radicalized.
For aside from breathing in the noxious fumes generated by those blaring, two-stroke engines — that to me just sound like Anger — I was further exposed to levels of toxic masculinity like none I’ve ever known. That I was going to college really bothered one grievance-based, full-timer and after almost getting into it with this gentleman, I vowed two things: I would never be like him, and I would never, ever, EVER push a lawnmower again.
For years this was easy because I lived in New York City, where I considered ZERO yard work just one more perk of urban living. But then I moved to Beacon where I bought a barely-standing, two-family Frankenhouse in need of foundation-up new construction. A parade of pickups, cement mixers and fork lifts took out a good part of the grass on my scrubby, quarter-acre, and after assessing what remained, I could feel my old resentment rising up in me like an angry cobra:
I will NOT have a lawn!
I will NOT push a lawnmower!
Despite my life-long hostility, however, I am NOT a Lawnist. I mean…some of my best friends have lawns. Furthermore, MY resentment is based in scientific fact. For in the NOISE-POLLUTING competition to outdo the greenness of one’s neighbors, Americans (according to the EPA) consume 3 trillion gallons of water, burn 200 million gallons of gas, and pour out 70 million pounds of pesticides that, among other hazards, contaminate fish populations and drinking water. This is also bad for bees. And you wouldn’t believe it, but bees are even more important than Netflix.
Aside from being an environmental menace, lawns are BORING. Diversity is Strength and this also applies to landscaping. Knowing that I must RESIST the Vegetation Patriarchy, I planted four different kinds of groundcover that would never need to be cut. Getting 200 starter plants in the ground, however, took forever. Then I borrowed a pickup and made a half-dozen trips to Beacon’s transfer station for free mulch. After covering all of the bare spots — which was most of my yard — those plants then needed to be watered. I was further spending countless hours a week yanking up weeds and grass and killing Japanese Knotweed, an invasive, bamboo-like plant forever storming up the hill onto my lot. More than fending off the Knotweed, however, I was fending off the fact that I was spending WAY more time maintaining my yard than if I were just pushing a damned mower.
(This is when my yard felt like a stinging microcosm of my life: I’ve always wanted to not have to work too hard, yet been willing to work really hard to achieve that goal.)
Every summer, however, the starter plants kept propagating, leaving fewer primo spots for weeds. And then one quiet morning, after dispatching a manhole-sized network of crabgrass with a single pull, I realized that weeding is damned satisfying. My mind freely wanders the plains and the topic most frequently trending is my own mortality. For despite single-handedly defeating the enemy, I know that Nature will win out in the end. (And that my remains will just become ammo.) While lots of people use the other kind of grass to facilitate deep thought, I can fast-forward right into an existential embrace of my own death just by stepping out onto my back yard. Besides, I love being connected to the part of the earth for which I’m responsible, smelling my honeysuckle patch and watching and listening to the birds until-
THE MOTHERFUCKING LANDSCAPER STARTS MOWING NEXT DOOR!
Sheesh.
Usually I go inside and do actual work until the angry, gas-guzzling machines go away. Then I’m glad to be back out enjoying my strange yard. I’ve got Creeping Thyme (which flowers purple) Ajuga (which flowers blue) and then two others, whose names I can’t pull down from The Cloud right now, but one flowers yellow and the other red. So while my yard is ever-changing, I most love it now when the dominant Thyme flowers, turning my yard a Prince shade of purple. I love seeing bees rolling on their backs, crowd-surfing over the flowers. Plus, having a purple “lawn” feels like flipping a colorful middle finger to our Lawn-Emissions Industrial Complex.
Only let’s be clear: I never did this to save the planet — I was motivated purely by my life-long hatred of mowing. And I would have done better to have planted wildflowers or another species native to North America. But do you know what other plant is not native to North America? You guessed it. Lawn is an actual immigrant menace systemically stealing jobs from American-born plants.
Now that my groundcover has almost fully connected, and I haven’t watered my yard in years, my dream of not having to work so hard has finally materialized. Besides, I love my time on the ground when all the dumb things over which I routinely obsess fall away, because then life feels perfect. Just perfect. Until…
THE MOTHERFUCKING LANDSCAPER STARTS MOWING ACROSS THE STREET!
Thankfully that other, better kind of grass is now legal in New York.
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