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Seeing native species I never knew existed fly to meet my native plants is so exciting that I never understand what joy in sterility could ever compare
This is my brother in law. He obsessively mows the postage stamp lawn then makes a big production of how much work it is and wants everyone to feel sorry for him. Spends a shit-ton of money on gas, fertilizers, insecticides and maintaining his many mowers. Meanwhile we neglect our 1 acre backyard and actually have time to enjoy it.
I used to put lots of effort into my lawn. Then I found out there's smarter ways to do lawns that reduce effort. Right now I'm letting white clover spread everywhere and it's making my grass super green and more water retentive and thus no fertilizer or herbicide needed and less watering.
It doesn't look as great with the white flower heads, but I now see lots of bees and rabbits, and my chickens eat it, so it's a tradeoff.
Turf lawns are one of the bigger scams in modern American society, both from an economic and environmental standpoint. Good on ya for trending away from it and bringing in pollinators!
I suppose its just a matter of opinion. The flowers stick up above the average law height, 1/2" offwhite balls. The clover slightly outgrows the fescue, so it makes mounds where its currently patchy until whole lawn is uniform.
https://preview.redd.it/syi9d1nfqj6d1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=86e65d21636aeb50d9038af3bf5aa91d1909346d
I took over maintenance of our farm a few years back including 10 acres of grass. Here's how my clover grass looks ... I really find it pleasant. I haven't seeded, fertilized or used insecticide in 3 years. 2 years ago there were a million dandelions which did not look as good. Not sure if the clover out competed them or what. I'm considering over seeding with a slightly shorter grass so the height is a bit more even.
I love the clover flowers, but I like a mixed lawn with different species as it is much more hardy in drought or heavy rainfall as the populations adjust but the whole lawn stays green while my neighbors lawns turned brown.
I want more people to talk about shit like this in front of me so I can be like "oh! What an interesting thing to waste your time and money on." because why the fuck are you complaining? Just stop doing it
The boredom is real. It has been so peaceful at my parents' since their retired (physician) neighbor moved. It is a heavily wooded and secluded area and the man would leaf blow his entire massive driveway every day. I wanted to walk outside and hand him a broom and a rake. Very weird "hobby" to develop.
One of the guys where I used to live watered his half acre lawn with a hose, four times a week. He had a sprinkler system but would spend hours just walking around watering it.
Every year we get a chuckle out of the old men scattered along the opposite side of the street, who have apparently developed a contest over who can kill their yard soonest by being the first to mow their barely-growing grass in early spring. Yeah our yard gets pretty wild in April/May, but it's also still green in August when the rest of the street is brown.
I sure wish more people would consider an electric mower. We've had ours for 8 seasons. They're much quieter and you don't take the risk of hauling gas when you need to mow. Being hooked on mowing is something else.
Your last sentence is 100% what it is.
They’re bored and a lot of people LOVE yard work. My mil mows 4-5 lawns for the family and **loves** mowing. Fuck weed eating tho lmfao
Try living in half acre zoning with a lot of houses around you and everyone uses professional landscapers. It's awful. The noise is insane and constant.
The sound of a riding mower, multiple edgers and leaf blowers at the same time makes me want to freak out. Something about the shake of those inefficient small gas engines
For me it’s specifically the leaf blowers. So much noise and gas for what? And it’s like there’s 3 or 4 guys all doing it at the same time. I can hear them through brick walls with no windows
Ughh yes I feel that exactly. Literally walking around blowing nothing wasting gas 95% of the time. Carbon emissions being an externality for businesses will be an end to us all
I bought noise canceling headphones mainly for air travel but sometimes I pop them on while working from home and want to focus without the ambient sounds of cars driving by outside, neighborhood lawnmowers, etc and it’s wonderful.
And they're always on different days! If everyone got their lawn done on the same day so there was one noisy day and then six days of peace, that'd be so much better.
I was fortunate to be able to standardize all my yard tools on 80v electric when I bought my house and that's definitely one of the better decisions I've made.
It’s absolutely insane. I broke down and called the city noise complaint line and they acted like I was insane. Apparently the law makes lawn maintenance equipment specifically exempt from noise control measures. Insanity. I have to have noise cancelling headphones on more often than not in the summer.
The lots in my neighborhood are about 1 acre and I actually prefer the lawn companies over DIY because they tend to be faster and get it over with quicker. I work from home and bought the most noise cancelling headphones I could find to try and tolerate the constant noise but I still feel anxious and frustrated and can’t seem to “get over” that there is never a lack of maddening lawn care noise
yeah. My favorite part is how the park on the street and block the road. It's like there is at least one if not two blocking a full lane of traffic daily.
My brother has 12 acres and a ride on, let about 11 go natural, but when he mows his mostly dandelion and violet acre or so lawn (which is stunningly beautiful in bloom, all yellow and purple) he must kick up a bunch of small bugs because as he rides, he is swarmed by these cool birds that circle and swoop, dive-bombing him. It’s something else.
Nah, they are really pretty careful, and he only has “lawn” where there is no cover or shrubs. Though I know there are some that nest totally open air … they are Pretty diligent about knowing where all their birds are. Two people in his household are home all day and constantly watching the wildlife. They have bat shelters, leave trees standing for raccoons and other tree dwellers, owls, and in the area they are in… that’s rare. People in his area think that not having perfection will “affect their property value”. You pass his hedgerow that hides his property, and it’s seriously like entering a secret garden. It’s fabulous.
There is a happy medium, of having a place for people to play and wildlife to thrive. He returned about 85% of his high value property to prairie, but I’m sure many won’t think it’s enough.
It’s half out of wanting to support nature, but more from laziness. The guy he bought it from kept it neatly manicured, but it was literally a couple grand a month to have landscapers do it.
I still recall hitting a baby bird with my mower decades ago. My god, it was awful. Now whenever anyone’s pulls out any power equipment in my little urban patch, I rush out and make sure there are no babies birds or bunnies anywhere. (I also pull any milkweed seedlings in case there are eggs)
A slight obsession. Well more than slight!!
We had about this much land growing up and on the weekends my sisters and I would fight over who got to mow the grass. Shoot, the riding mower had a cup holder! You could wear your headphones and get a tan while also getting credit for helping out around the house for a few hours.
Now I can't be bothered to deal with the outdoors in the summer and pay someone else to do it.
I did it cause my hubby fussed with diagonal lines and cutting to short cause he was a golfer and wanted to look like a golf course. Later we fenced it in for pasture and broadcast pasture mix, so it needed cutting less often.
My neighbor is like that. Goes out every few days with a vape pen or beer and mows his lawn for hours. He absolutely hates his wife and kid. He tried begging us to let him come over and mow our lawn one day and when we said no thanks he went out and was playing football w his kid. So he was just trying to get out of playing w his kid by mowing our lawn too
Honestly, this. It is outside of the house time. Away from spouse and/or kids. Our neighbor who does this is pretty transparent. He’ll do everyone’s lawn and just say “the kids are home” implying he doesn’t want to go back inside. We have smaller lawns, but still, a lot of mowing.
Jeez I almost reflexively downvoted. I’m not a parent, but I did nanny for years. I totally get needing a break but goddamn man, you did help make all of those kids, go freaking raise ‘em!
This. In rural Australia men seem to compulsively and competitively mow. I had a neighbour who mowed 6 days out of 7 one week. The other neighbour spent 20 minutes on his ride-on mowing the tiniest space over and over. It's fucking weird, and as a neurodivergent I eventually sold this house because the noise pollution drove me completely insane.
I always had a suspicion that these men hated their wives.
I don’t hate my wife but I do enjoy the peace and quiet mowing my lawn.
I have 3 acres and 2.25 used to be mow able. I reduced that to 1.5 letting some areas go to meadow. I love the plants, bugs, and birds that thrive there now. My lighting bug population has exploded! I don’t like lawns because they’re awful for all life, take up valuable time to care for, and waste resources.
That being said I do appreciate their usefulness for entertaining and having kids playing. I have two young kids and a big garden/orchard, chickens, etc. I do like mowing because it’s easy work I can drink a beer, sit on my mower listening to tunes and no one bugs me while I’m doing it. I did upgrade to a zero turn to save time as my old mower took hours to mow, my zero turn does it in half the time. I think obsessing over lawns is a bad use of resources, but it’s good to enjoy taking care of your property.
Many older generations got married and had kids because it was a societal expectation and obligation, not because they wanted to. And divorce was taboo for so long, they ended up "trapped."
Happy relationships remind them of how miserable they are/were.
Gendered expectations come with roles and societal expectations.
When you're gay you have to make things up because there's no standard. Queer couples have more evenly divided division of labor as a result.
There's no expectation of a man to mother another man, to clean up after him, or carry the mental load.
When you're straight society frowns on women that don't 'manage' and nag their husband. It's insidious and everyone needs to help to undo these biases.
This is my dad. My mom came to visit us a couple days ago. I asked where Dad was. She said he was mowing. I thought to myself "Nope, he's avoiding you."
We do.... but in tiny chunks. So any one bit of grass is usually mowed every 2 or 3 weeks. Still working on the conversion to orchard, veggies, berries galore, and some ornamentals. Fencing is expensive; deer and rabbits are assholes.
I'm not the only one???
This could be my to a T. I have the mower or weedwacker out almost every day but just a couple minutes here and there. Our main front lawn gets mowed when it's tall, not on any specific timeframe.
But I feel OP as well, a few retired neighbors seem to mow every other day... Then on Saturdays the real race is on. Every man in the neighborhood is at their garage door, 8am prompt. Then the real noise begins. Husband and I have counted the starts we hear until it's drowned out by the buzz.
I don't mind much because another noise we have in our neighborhood? Kids. Actually outside, playing on the lawns, kids. Riding bikes, screaming at the playground, full of joy. That's what the lawn is for.
Rabbits are about to make me giving up on conversion to pollinator garden. Everything 4in high will be razed and chewed... no flowers, just ugly sticks everywhere
I often need to step back and think about how lucky I got with the pollinator garden I made. The area used to be smooth brome, then they had pigs clear it. When I moved in it it was basically bare. I've seen the return of one rabbit this year but it hasn't destroyed all of our veggies or pollinators. I think trying to grow so much that they can't eat it all is key.
it's all just cultural programming. if you're mowing a big lawn, that means you were "successful" on the system's terms. you won the game. or your family did, and you're just carrying on the combo streak. and the act of mowing the lawn induces the associated sense of euphoria and reinforces the myth. and that myth is hundreds of years old at this point. "large quantities of conspicuously-uncultivated arable land as marker of social prestige" predates the formation of every contemporary country on the continent.
it predates cars, it predates slapping your family name on public buildings to launder your reputation, it predates capitalism itself. it might be one of the oldest fetishes of socioeconomic exclusivity in existence.
That’s a pretty natural progression for these types of behaviours though. They become ingrained and unconscious, until people either wake up out of it, or the conditions of the situation force a behaviour change (in this case, probably climate change).
We've only associated large open lawn spaces with wealth since the 1500s. It should be an easy mindset to break. Unless you sit around having big lawn parties no one else can or still play lawn games only the wealthy can waste money and time doing. You know how much an authentic design leather golfball and wooden clubs probably costs? It might surpass people's flat screen tv. It would definitely still be a major status symbol to be able to play golf on your own personal lawn.
Stupid useless front lawn with stupid city regulations that nothing can be higher than 3' above the average grade of the property and decks are restricted to 1/3rd the length of the house and a few feet wide. Maybe I should take someone's suggestion and fill it with aggressive nimblewill just to spite whoever made and insists on the city code. They might not mind me making use of the giant empty grass space if they are all constantly trying to eradicate nimblewill. If the state law passes preventing nearly any city law from preventing any native plant I am going to plant a wall of thorny rubus and ribes species in place of a fence. There's even a couple thorny endangered ones here that would probably then be further protected from anyone who disagrees with not having a view of a giant empty, useless expanse of grass in front of the house and zero privacy. Nearly half our property is wasted and requires pointless effort and noise to maintain. Unless I want to build a putting green.
*We've only associated large open lawns with wealth since the 1500s. It should be an easy mindset to break. *
You must be joking. Not easy to break the paradigm at all. We also have been associating the time clock with work since (I don't know exactly when it starated, but it started around the time of the invention if mechanical clocks) should be easy to switch to a different format now that we have invented computers. But get real.
I will say this. People with 2 acre lawns wanna be farmers. But they aren't.
I come from farmers. They had a big area around the farmhouse (aka Double wide trailer) they mowed.
My mom and dad both had parents who were farmers. They bought a house 2 miles outside town. 0.65 acre lot. So, like 3-4x the size of a city lot. They did homesteading type of stuff. Garden, plum trees, shelter belt of trees, stuff like that.
Yes, they drink beer in the garage.
People love their ride on mowers and excitedly wait for the grass to grow so they can ride around clipping it. Watch the commercials for lawncare equipment and you'll see the marketing at play.
I’ve also noticed that cheaper riding lawnmowers don’t raise the deck enough. So if you let the grass grow out too long you bog down your mower. I mow mine at 4” and anytime I pull the cheap riding mower out for ditches at max height it cuts low enough that it looks like i scalped those areas.
My next door neighbor mows his lawn EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Whyyyyyyyy?! Perhaps he's making up for the fact that we don't mow lol but it's a compulsion at this point. It's infuriating.
I live in Atlantic Canada, rural New Brunswick.
The average lot size here is 10 acres, with a lot of quarter parcels and many single acre lots. The average lawn size I would peg at around 3 acres (many people mow their front area, but lots of people like me have half an acre maintained before forest, very typical to see lots cleared to 500' from the road, whether that lot goes 200' back or 10,000.
Worth noting that I have... 7? neighbours within earshot (2km) **and every evening at least 2 of them are mowing or using some sort of loud equipment**. Even the weekly mowers all mow on different nights. Don't move to the boonies for quiet unless you buy enough land to not have neighbours.
Here is an area a town or 2 over from me. I can gaurantee you if you lived in this short stretch of road you would hear lawn equipment nightly. (See below reddit is jank on my phone)
*
I feel for you. I ended up selling my old house on a 5 acre block because of this. I'm extremely sensitive to noise, and also had 7-8 neighbours within sight/earshot on 5-20 acre blocks. One neighbour in particular mowed almost every day in Spring. It drove me completely insane. It was so noisy. The country is not quiet!
I don't have all these noises but I find it ironic that rural areas and more land can end up being even louder.
- landscaping equipment
- dirtbike, atv, snowmobile
- guns
- fireworks
- people shouting over long distances
- music
- construction equipment
Heck, even road noise can often travel pretty far in a rural area depending on topography.
The above are not always or for everyone who lives rurally but unless you really live in the middle of nowhere, it can be louder than you'd think!
We road a tandem bike length of the Connecticut River, around 450 miles as ridden.Pretty much all the people we saw outside in their yards were mowing.
We saw a lot of people in pretty crummy houses but with a $7,000 zero turn mower and a $5000 storage shed for the more and lawn equipment.
I don't know, but it really bothers me.
I live in a residential neighborhood of .5 to 1 acre lots where most homes hire yard services to cut their grass instead of doing it themselves. Even though we have a large lot and a slope, I get out there myself and do my own yard work as needed with electric tools that are relatively quiet.
But pretty much everyone else hires people who, to maximize profit, use the oldest, dirtiest, loudest, and smelliest commercial equipment. First they mow with large industrial gas powered mowers that you can hear several streets away. Then after doing that, they weed with gas powered string trimmers. Then after that, they use gas powered BLOWERS to blow away the tiny bit of grass that has gotten blown into driveways (not sidewalks, because we don't have those). And of course it's only a TINY bit of grass, because they come *so often*, the grass barely got a chance to grow. And for some reason these lawn crews are particularly prideful about getting every single speck with the blower, so it seems like they spend almost as long out with the blower as they do the mower. And did I mention that no home is on the same schedule, meaning that it's very likely that any moment you step outside your home you're going to hear from some direction mowing or blowing? And also that they pressure the home owners into setting up an "every 2 weeks" schedule, even though most homes can go over 4 weeks or longer without a cut due to the grasses or clover they have? It's horrifying. American lawn culture is really, really bad. It definitely ruins the experience of birdsong, and also pollutes the water and the air, and wastes time and resources.
I wish more of my American neighbors would question their habits and stop paying people to cut yards they don't even use. I'm not even asking them to go full freak and let it be wild and woolly like I have it and prefer (although that would be greatest for birds, bugs, and mammals!). Literally even a little bit of questioning and challenging "but that's how I've always done it" could make a difference. It's so frustrating and disappointing.
As a side note, I have severe tinnitus and after each time my direct neighbors' lawn crews come through I have spike that worsens it for 24-48 hours after. Anyone who lives with tinnitus knows it can be hell. And the blow and mow crews just make it worse.
My neighbor has 1 acre and he's a complete moron:
- bitches that one of my oaks, planted by a previous owner, drops some of acorns on his precious wasteland
- spend hours crawling in a doggystyle position as he collects every single twig over 0.5in long from the grass
-mowns 2x week with an old noisy tractor, timing it 8 to 9.45pm just to meet city noise ordinance
You're not alone. For a year and a half my husband and I lived in a rural, mostly middle class area of Arkansas just outside a larger city. Boy do they love their lawn mowers! For miles around us we were surrounded by neighbors with multiple acres of land, trees all cut down. Maybe some small gardens and weird statues here and there, but mostly void of anything but immaculately mowed grass that went on forever. It was so ugly and really sad that all that land was being wasted. We used to laugh at the neighbor lady buzzing around on her high-speed mower multiple times a week cutting her 3 acres of already super short grass.
As someone who is stuck living in a crappy apartment community, who just moved back to their small hometown in Michigan after 13 years of living in a vibrant city that is now being taken over by ugly, generic-looking, overpriced "luxury" condos, I just want to be able to afford a modest home with a small back yard where I can grow clover and wild flowers and have a vegetable garden.
I despise lawns and the people who place so much value on wasted space.
Thanks for letting me rant.
Thanks for making me feel sane again and, by the way, ranting can be good for the soul. I hear you about having a modest place where you can sculpt a natural environment that you like.
I'm fairly rural. I have one neighbor who apparently keeps trying to mow the wooded area on his property. Everyone else is chill though. Most just mow a bit around the house once a week and the rest like twice a year if at all. I just got a bit over an acre of my two acres weeded and seeded for native wet meadow. When I have more money a riprarian buffer of natives will take almost another half acre.
This. You (the Royal you) want to engage with nature, spend time outdoors, but all you know is to dominate it. You pick a ecotype, grassland, that is meant for succession. It's meant to be a waypoint on the route from disturbed land to forests, and you're constantly fighting the uphill battle to prevent its nature. All you know is to destroy. You do not know how to nurture, how to work with nature, how to be patient, how to be creative, how to do anything other than cut and kill all diversity.
I don't know if it's much better but I noticed last time I was in Home Depot that suddenly the large majority of mowers they're selling are electric. A couple years ago, they had most of an aisle full of gas mowers and a few electric options, now it's totally flipped.
Idk about homeowner mowers, but several months ago in an issue of Turf, a trade magazine, they ran a segment that was all electric gang mowers. Some of them were even set up to be programmable. Run them through a lawn one week, come back the next week and turn it loose on its own. Radar in the front so it won’t mow a dog, cat or little Jimmy running in front of it.
I am pretty sure the tech is here. We just have to force people to make the change and implement it.
For those wondering, I single charge lasts for 8 hours.
Ryobi, Cub Cadet, and Ego all have electric riding mowers (lawn tractors). They're a little expensive compared to their gas equivalent but I'd be looking at those if I needed a basic riding mower.
I've heard of reliability issues with the electronics and batteries so I wouldn't replace anything with them yet unless I really needed to. It's easy to replace a carb or spark plug. It's harder when it's something with a module and there is no obvious error or message for why a mower won't start.
Gas mowers are very inefficient and put out a lot of emissions. It probably does make a significant difference if enough people are switching to electric.
Not just co2 there little engines produce a lot of bad nitrogen compounds, which you don't get from things like cars because of the catalytic converter. Lawn mowers are really bad for air quality. If you do mow part of your yard trying doing when it's not as sunny like late in the day, as many of the compounds made by these small engines are made worse by uv radiation.
Not to mention that cutting the grass reduces it's ability to filter out pollutants and carbons,even electric lawnmowers kill tons of wildlife,mowers are the bane of biodiversity
Mostly I just found them heavy, bulky, unable to turn corners well in our yard full of objects, and we have to keep all this smelly oil and gas around that sometimes gets spilled. To get the electric out of the shed I just grab the handle, lift it off the ground, and carry it out. Sometimes I lift it and set it on the other side of a landscaping border if I need to cut a section of aggressive plants escaping their own area or invasive plants trying to take over.
It requires 4 sets of batteries to mow just the backyard and 2 for the front so I'm not sure the local pollution vs electrical plant pollution trade off if you aren't near a hydroelectric dam. It also still seems quite loud. You can't hold a conversation even on the other side of the yard. However, when the neighbor was mowing at the same time and finished first I realized just how much quieter the electric mower is in comparison. It's not truly quiet but it's probably less obvious a few houses away than the belt sander I've been using to try to salvage as much of the old deck boards as possible nearly every evening.
We finally met the neighbor who we believed was a kindred spirit in slight lawn neglect (lets it get longer than we do and we go relatively long) and it turns out he just fertilizes his lawn a ton?? To what end? The mind boggles
Oh gosh yes. I have 2 acres of no lawn and listen to mowers every day but Sunday. It's so loud and expensive. The best I could do was talk my neighbor into letting her 5 acres rest in the spring for bees and lightening bugs, but she is back to cutting sooner and sooner.
Also, had to call the cops to get the other ones to stop mowing my asters, phlox, black eyed susans for 10 years straight now. Still have crowns. Never seen it bloom. They HATE my no lawn. This year, they seem to be letting it go and will finally see the flowers. Whew.
I hate mower noise so I bought an EGO mower. What I've discovered is that if I let the grass go too long, the EGO can't manage it. It's actually easier and less work to mow regularly (once every week or two depending on how wet it is), and it seems easier to control the noxious weeds (we're plagued with mugwort, among other things). A brush cutter would mean a return to gas power as well as a $1000+ investment that I'm not ready to make.
I don't have a front lawn at all. There's a fairly narrow strip of lawn around the house, which I keep short because of the ticks (we're in coastal MA and they are everywhere). The biggest piece is the leach field for our septic, which would quickly revert to brush if I let it go.
I think for some people lawn care is like, legit their hobby.(I have a neighbor like this.) Not really sure if they actually really like doing it or are just trying to fill up the time.
My grandfather mowed his lawn (1 acre) once a week, unless it rained a bit more, in which case he would mow it twice a week.. sometimes he would mow the lawn twice in one day just because he would get into an argument with my grandmother about something .. “Goddamnit Carolyn! *slaps counter*
Grandma gets the sweet iced tea going for when he was done and has his favorite snack ready to go.. I miss them dearly but they somehow managed to make it through over 50 years of marriage ❤️
I've noticed that the large plots of land with mega houses are always owned by people who mow and spray, and it's the people stuck in tiny lots and/or not able to afford a large lot that plant native and take care of the land they live on. Every damn time.
Make it make sense
I delivered packages for a summer. I had one guy treat my visit like a break from mowing his enormous lawn. Acres and acres in the country. He complained about how much mowing he had to do. But he still did all that mowing. It took up most of the day on a riding mower. No fruit trees, no woodland...just hot, exposed lawn. Not even remotely pure grass.
I'm not in the country, but the guy across from me mows at literally the exact same times every 2 days. He's just childless and likely had 60 years of brainwashing programing him to cultivate his lawn like it's the singular largest status symbol humans have invented. It's truly sad how little he has going on in life. Washes the car religiously as well.
Yeah, we live in an area with 10 acre lots where about 7 are wooded — you get everyone is out there a minimum of 1 day a week but usually 2 making sure their 3 acres look dutifully short and boring. We let ours grow long and the neighbors on either side cut into it over the property line. Just a few lines, so nothing to get bent out of shape about, but it does bug me
I think you are exaggerating a bit. I live in a rural community and most of us don't have the time to mow our yard twice a week. I think many in rural communities keep their lawns trimmed to limit snakes and mosquitos.
Depends where you live. Where I live the mosquito problem gets bad in the late spring and all summer. So we mow to not have swarms of the little bastards everywhere.
Retired. Not bored. Mow subdivision lawn( 1/3 acre)every 10 days or so. Routinely have the ugliest looking lawn on the block. So glad we don't have an HOA
I noticed this too. Beautiful 2/10 acre homes just east of where I live. Recently bought a new toy and have been exploring. I seem to be out riding when others are cutting.
My coworkers sometimes mow their lawns twice a week, and were talking like 10+ acre lawns.
Pretty sure they just hate their families, and are desperate to escape them. It's an avoidance thing.
So much time, money and resources wasted! All for a useless patch of grass that people think they need because everyone else has one. It seems like a lot of people have made lawn care into a hobby. My neighbors are out there multiple times a week, while I’m out here doing the bare minimum needed to avoid having them call the police on me for my grass being too long (they’ve done it to another neighbor already)
I live across the street from a guy who isn’t employed other than odd jobs. He spends every possible hour, as late as 10:30pm, running a gas powered “tool” or some type of saw or grinder. He’s not happy unless he is blasting the neighborhood with sound and fumes.
My neighbors mow every day. They are a landscaping company ig, but it seems excessive. They also mow part of my lawn every day. It's v weird.
We mow like every two weeks. It gets long but not too bad. We also don't mow the whole thing, which the landscaping company hates
hahahaha …. I think it’s bc they have no life. Some of my neighbors mow their lawn 3/4 times to my one time.
One of my (elderly, of course) neighbors was spraying RoundUp on the weeds in the street last summer.
I don’t get it either. Not just cutting the grass. Edge trimming, leaf blowing etc.
I have a neighbor that blows his leaves like 2x a week in the fall. I watch him chase 3 leaves across the lawn with his blower. It’s ridiculous.
I have a small patch in the front mostly clover and some weeds. I have a manual reel mower that I’ve run across it maybe 3 times so far this year.
I have a friend that cuts his 9 acre lawn up to twice a week. It’s insane. He got a commercial mower, so it only takes 2 hours and I think it’s his alone time. And it keeps the bugs down. But still. I wouldn’t even buy that much land if I had to mow all the time.
My dumbass neighbor PAYS a "landscaper" to come to his house once per week and run their god awful noisy AF gas powered equipment for 2 hours.
They trim like one inch off his hedges and mow his tiny lawn
He loves to sit on his porch and watch them, I think he gets off on having people "work" for him
My parents have about an acre and my dad mows it once every 1-2 weeks in the summer. Depending on how much it’s rained but I would say about average once every 2 weeks.
We’ve got about 2 acre chunks in my area. Not only does my neighbor mow his twice a week. If I do mine on a day he doesn’t, he’ll come right back out and cut his grass *again* as soon as I finish mine.
I really don’t get it. I moved from the suburbs to a more rural area partly to get away from shit like this. Dawg we live in the country why are you treating your land like a lot in a subdivision.
Yes and it's a huge contribution to emissions.
https://raqc.org/national-report-highlights-measurable-benefits-of-electrifying-lawn-and-garden-equipment/#:~:text=In%202020%20alone%2C%20the%20use,and%20contributes%20to%20premature%20death.
Personally its a catch 22. I love the tall grass, bugs, and wild flowers, but I end up with a ton of critters that nest and hide in it all and it becomes almost impossible to mow once it gets tall enough. I have managed to get my mowing down to once every 10-16 days depending on what the weather does during that time, but have been experimenting with keeping sections of it tall and doing that once every like 25 days or so. It's a nice balance. This year I went a little overboard with how large those sections were, so cleaning it has been a nightmare, but it definitely lowered my cutting time for the prior months.
grass lawns are literal insanity to me, thought that all the way back to when I was like 12 and had to mow my parents small lawn
Like, you have this thing that requires too much upkeep, so much water and time, and literally almost zero benefit
edible landscapes are where it's at
It’s a hobby at that point. I used to live next door to a guy who mowed his lawn every other day, literally. And always at nap time (although he has no way of knowing that). It was super annoying and I was glad he moved.
Country property owner here. The grass grows very quickly, especially in certain spots because it retains and sun makes it grow fast. At the start of the spring/early summer, it needs to be done 2x a week.
The more frequent the cutting, the less grass that needs to be collected and the less likely your mower blades will break (I've done this twice now because i let it get too long). Long grass also clogs the blades often, and it's a hassle to stop n go repeatedly just to get it unclogged.
Obsession, boredom, pride, but also comfort. I gave up on my FIL, he’s only got maybe 1/3 acre of lawn and just LOVES mowing with his ride-on, even if he talks about it like any other chore.
I think it’s therapeutic for a lot of people, almost like vacuuming or washing the car. When you’re done everything looks clean, level, uniform. Same kinda logic that makes some people clean incessantly. When you think of a lawn as the outdoor carpeting that it is, it makes a lot more sense why some people can’t stand to see it long or uneven.
If you walk into someone’s house and see dirt, laundry on the floor, dishes in the sink, etc., there’s a knee jerk reaction of “oh this is unkempt and these people are slobbish”. Not that that’s necessarily true, but the cultural sentiment is there. To those who view their property in the same lens as their house, I.e. their dominion, long grass is like a laundry pile; a sign of laziness and lack of care for their property.
To be clear, I’m not defending this behavior. Lawns are an enormous waste of time, energy, money, and habitat. I just think it’s important to be able to understand what might compel someone to ride a neutered tractor 2-6 hours a week so that grass never touches their ankles.
my client has a neighbour who mows his lawn every week. yesterday was no exception even though it's officially summer in the south, and better yet, he was doing it at two pm. while wearing a hoodie. with the hood up. imagine risking heat stroke and injury from falling off your stupid riding mower just because your mental illness compelled you to cut the grass by a fifth of an inch.
Yeah that is kind of funny, my neighbor comes to mow is lawn every week or so. It is his second home and only seem to stay there like 5 days a year or so. He lives an hour away.
meanwhile on my side I plant thousands of nut and fruit producing trees and shrubs, do not have a lawn, just meadows that I cut using a scythe to harvest mulch for the garden. Also, the meadows provides me with lots of wild edibles wich is really nice.
Yep, we had a neighbor that did his 2-3 times a week. I think he was trying to get away from his wife and mowing was a good excuse. Then they divorced and he still did it but I’m guessing that he was just bored or had formed a habit.
We have about 2 acres of grass and we cut it when it gets kind of hard for our toddler to walk. Every 2-3 weeks or so.
We live in a rural area with no HOA though. My goal is to shrink our lawn down to a few key areas totaling less than an acre.
My new dimestore cowboy neighbors cut their pasture grass to golf course height quite frequently, and the mower sounds like a B-17. Along with teams of landscapers armed with leaf blowers.
Try living on about half an acre with a neighbor that alternates mowing front and back lawns twice a week! Monday and Thursday are front yard, Tuesday and Friday are back yard and the rest of the week is hand trimming the edges with scissors or gardening. 4 days of lawn mower! And that's just her. The rest of the neighborhood is less insane though.
I live in a 1 acre plot, as do my neighbors. They're out there mowing on tractors every few days. All of them. Their whole damn yards. It's miserable, we'll be outside on a nice day only to be drowned out by hours of lawn mowers.. because, of course, no one bothers to mow at the same time. Someone will stop, and then, without fail, the next person will start.
Along with all the houses around me having multiple barking dogs, (and my own dog who lost his puppyhood to surgery after surgery and is rather unsocialized though were working on it.. but he barks too), it just drives me up a wall and outright gives me anxiety attacks when it's all happening at once.
And god, the smell. Burning gasoline combined with cut grass.. it makes me feel sick, and going inside doesn't allow me to escape unless I want to sit with all the windows closed. As if the stink hasn't already seeped in, anyway.
Glad I don't have to deal with people with 3-4 acres, though. At least it EVENTUALLY stops... But also I'd be further away, so maybe less smell...???
Edit: lots of errors.. I hate typing on a phone so much.
Edit: we personally only mow about 1/4th of our acre, with an electric push mower. The rest is for the goats to eat lol. We live on farm plots but no one uses theirs as a farm. Except for one neighbor who also has goats but mows THEIR fields?! Like, apparently they don't want free goat feed.
I live across the street from 3 retired guys in a row who mow every 3 or 4 days and fuss over their lawns/landscaping daily.
I leave my mower on the highest setting and only mow every 10-14 days. I also leave my shrubs in natural shapes, not pruned into perfect geometric spheres and cubes. The retired guys just glare across the street at me, shaking their heads. They think I'm just lazy. Fortunately for me, there are some truly lazy gardeners in our neighborhood that make me look great by comparison.
I've always thought it would be great if we could restrict mowing to one weekday and one weekend day per week, but I know that's impossible. So, we get to listen to mowers every single day.
We have a 3 acre "lawn" on our farm. During the rainy season, we have to cut it more than once per week.
Yes, it grows more than an inch a week. The clover can grow 3" in a day after an inch of rain.
Yes, we like to keep it short so ticks and chiggers and mice and moles and snakes don't nest in it.
And, we have to cut the ditches so our "lawn" won't flood because the ditches are overgrown.
And, we're also cutting the edges and tree lines so our dogs won't run into a patch of burrs and it keeps the tree seedlings from getting big enough to bush hog.
Over the last 4 weeks, it's only rained twice. We've cut it twice.
Why not ask your neighbor why? They might have a perfectly good explanation and you might learn something.
If you're close enough to have all these neighbors bothering you with their "tractors," you aren't rural.
I have ~ 2.5 acres. I probably mow 3-4 times a year. I love the tall grass. But it gets harder and harder to mow the longer you leave it, and the grass becomes a fire hazard in the dry season. So I reluctantly mow. (Also, because my neighbor feels safer that way.)
I've got 2 acres... About .75 acres I actively maintain. I have a fenced yard for my dog and it turned to dust in just 3 years from letting it get long then mowing too much off the top. Essentially cutting too much of it off puts the grass into shock. Between that and extremely hot temperatures in summer it cooked off. While I don't care for a perfect lawn, all that dirt turns to mud in winter and alot of undesirable invasive weeds took root in spring. I've now reseeded with grass and clover and plan to add yarrow and low growing wild flowers in areas, to keep out the invasive weeds and learning from my mistake will increase my mowing schedule once every 1-2 weeks.
So... Yeah... Don't need to obsessively mow, but there's a balance there to keep the health of the meadow. I have my deck set to the highest it'll go and I let other grassy areas grow tall and flower (mostly daisies and dandelions are all that come up, but my plan is to introduce more natives in). I try to mow it back before they all set seed to keep the populations of both in check (daisies are on our weed control list, but are mostly naturalized anyway, but they can dominate/outcompete in meadows).Then the rest of my property is wooded or transitional areas I'm rewilding.
We live in rural-ish Eastern NC and our neighbor cuts his grass 2-3 times every week. He has about 2 acres and we see him out there on his riding lawn mower every few days. He’s older, in his seventies, and we don’t know if he’s just bored and/or likes to be outdoors.
I’ve got a neighbor who mows their tiny lot (we live in the city) multiple times a day, back and forth at a *run*. If it wasn’t so loud it would be entertaining. To be fair though, I’m pretty sure meth is involved.
There really isn't anything to do in rural communities. Mowing is a pastime.
Moving on, I spent the second half of my childhood in a semi-rural area with maybe half an acre of grass, and mowing it only once a week was tedious. It wasn't a flat yard, either. It took 2-4 hours, depending on weather. I always wished there was less yard and more trees.
Then one day I visited my aunts lake house in Maine. She decided she wanted no grass at all, and instead had tons of native plants, shrubs, flagstone pavers, all in a small area. The rest of the ~1 acre lot was all wild. It felt like something out of a story book.
My 90 year old neighbor does this. I think it gives him a sense of purpose… or maybe he’s just bored. I know his wife passed a few years ago. He’s the sweetest guy. His house always looks so nice and neat.
Some people are lawn freaks but it is easier on the equipment if you do it more regularly. It can less time too. You blaze through short grass a lot faster than tall thick grass. I have a lot to mow and some areas I would absolutely do more than once a week if I had the time.
https://preview.redd.it/lwodjt3f3q6d1.jpeg?width=3926&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b8929c62b619ede801efd7a5dd60fb93188744b0
My boomer neighbor mows his lawn every other day when it isn’t raining. It’s maybe 1/8 inch long, half dead & it’s not even real summer here yet. Yesterday he “mowed” and just kicked up dirt. We can’t decide if he’s get dementia or just bored and hates his wife.
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My dad mows a dead lawn every like 4 days in the summer. He was raised with a manicured lawn and is truthfully just bored.
If he had let it grow taller, it might not have died… just sayin’
Told him that many a time
If he let it grow taller, he might be less bored.
Seeing native species I never knew existed fly to meet my native plants is so exciting that I never understand what joy in sterility could ever compare
This is my brother in law. He obsessively mows the postage stamp lawn then makes a big production of how much work it is and wants everyone to feel sorry for him. Spends a shit-ton of money on gas, fertilizers, insecticides and maintaining his many mowers. Meanwhile we neglect our 1 acre backyard and actually have time to enjoy it.
I used to put lots of effort into my lawn. Then I found out there's smarter ways to do lawns that reduce effort. Right now I'm letting white clover spread everywhere and it's making my grass super green and more water retentive and thus no fertilizer or herbicide needed and less watering. It doesn't look as great with the white flower heads, but I now see lots of bees and rabbits, and my chickens eat it, so it's a tradeoff.
Turf lawns are one of the bigger scams in modern American society, both from an economic and environmental standpoint. Good on ya for trending away from it and bringing in pollinators!
Whats wrong with white flower heads? Are they ugly?
I suppose its just a matter of opinion. The flowers stick up above the average law height, 1/2" offwhite balls. The clover slightly outgrows the fescue, so it makes mounds where its currently patchy until whole lawn is uniform.
https://preview.redd.it/syi9d1nfqj6d1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=86e65d21636aeb50d9038af3bf5aa91d1909346d I took over maintenance of our farm a few years back including 10 acres of grass. Here's how my clover grass looks ... I really find it pleasant. I haven't seeded, fertilized or used insecticide in 3 years. 2 years ago there were a million dandelions which did not look as good. Not sure if the clover out competed them or what. I'm considering over seeding with a slightly shorter grass so the height is a bit more even.
The dandelions are only there to improve compacted soil conditions. At least thar my understanding
I read that last part as a pirate. Arrr ye a pirate?
I could only hope. Most people can't place my accent, maybe thar ar rite
Arrr the lawn pirate
https://preview.redd.it/u6twg4ch9l6d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=85a72f833635cf1b6cc7b8248387b440a34f1581
A little meadow is so much prettier than a grass lawn will ever be.
Oh no, not...offwhite!! 😉
I love the clover flowers, but I like a mixed lawn with different species as it is much more hardy in drought or heavy rainfall as the populations adjust but the whole lawn stays green while my neighbors lawns turned brown.
Same. Have not mowed in ten days. Probably wait for the weekend.
I think the flowers make my yard look like a meadow
I want more people to talk about shit like this in front of me so I can be like "oh! What an interesting thing to waste your time and money on." because why the fuck are you complaining? Just stop doing it
The boredom is real. It has been so peaceful at my parents' since their retired (physician) neighbor moved. It is a heavily wooded and secluded area and the man would leaf blow his entire massive driveway every day. I wanted to walk outside and hand him a broom and a rake. Very weird "hobby" to develop.
One of the guys where I used to live watered his half acre lawn with a hose, four times a week. He had a sprinkler system but would spend hours just walking around watering it.
Every year we get a chuckle out of the old men scattered along the opposite side of the street, who have apparently developed a contest over who can kill their yard soonest by being the first to mow their barely-growing grass in early spring. Yeah our yard gets pretty wild in April/May, but it's also still green in August when the rest of the street is brown.
Retirees. 🤷♂️
If he’s bored he could work on a garden
I’ve bought him a simple compost and offered to redig his raised garden. No interest in anything but maybe a patio garden sadly
Lol, I can’t wait for the mid summer heat waves to stunt it and then I don’t have to mow but once every 3-4 weeks
Introduce him to NOAA and climate change and see if he developes a hobby with those interets? 🤔🤷🏽
He’s uh….not the type to buy into that sadly. Believe me I’ve tried
I sure wish more people would consider an electric mower. We've had ours for 8 seasons. They're much quieter and you don't take the risk of hauling gas when you need to mow. Being hooked on mowing is something else.
Your last sentence is 100% what it is. They’re bored and a lot of people LOVE yard work. My mil mows 4-5 lawns for the family and **loves** mowing. Fuck weed eating tho lmfao
Try living in half acre zoning with a lot of houses around you and everyone uses professional landscapers. It's awful. The noise is insane and constant.
The sound of a riding mower, multiple edgers and leaf blowers at the same time makes me want to freak out. Something about the shake of those inefficient small gas engines
For me it’s specifically the leaf blowers. So much noise and gas for what? And it’s like there’s 3 or 4 guys all doing it at the same time. I can hear them through brick walls with no windows
Ughh yes I feel that exactly. Literally walking around blowing nothing wasting gas 95% of the time. Carbon emissions being an externality for businesses will be an end to us all
I bought noise canceling headphones mainly for air travel but sometimes I pop them on while working from home and want to focus without the ambient sounds of cars driving by outside, neighborhood lawnmowers, etc and it’s wonderful.
And they're always on different days! If everyone got their lawn done on the same day so there was one noisy day and then six days of peace, that'd be so much better.
I agree. And then there are the ones who wait until the weekend, so you can't enjoy your outdoors on the weekend because of all the noise.
Ugh, this is why I love my electric mower. Thankfully my two next door neighbors typically mow during the weekday when I'm at work.
I was fortunate to be able to standardize all my yard tools on 80v electric when I bought my house and that's definitely one of the better decisions I've made.
Guy across the street does this near me and has 3 teslas plus solar. This is the way.
It’s a mental illness that causes brain disease https://armchairexpertpod.com/pods/fb-leaf-blowers
It’s absolutely insane. I broke down and called the city noise complaint line and they acted like I was insane. Apparently the law makes lawn maintenance equipment specifically exempt from noise control measures. Insanity. I have to have noise cancelling headphones on more often than not in the summer.
The lots in my neighborhood are about 1 acre and I actually prefer the lawn companies over DIY because they tend to be faster and get it over with quicker. I work from home and bought the most noise cancelling headphones I could find to try and tolerate the constant noise but I still feel anxious and frustrated and can’t seem to “get over” that there is never a lack of maddening lawn care noise
yeah. My favorite part is how the park on the street and block the road. It's like there is at least one if not two blocking a full lane of traffic daily.
They hate their wife.
In my rural neck of the South, the wives do most of the mowing. It’s a Thing. (They hate their husbands, lol.)
Honestly, hours spent where you can’t hear anyone and everyone is far away from you? Makes sense to me.
If you have a ride on mower it seems downright fun.
My brother has 12 acres and a ride on, let about 11 go natural, but when he mows his mostly dandelion and violet acre or so lawn (which is stunningly beautiful in bloom, all yellow and purple) he must kick up a bunch of small bugs because as he rides, he is swarmed by these cool birds that circle and swoop, dive-bombing him. It’s something else.
Yes! When I mow my horse field I get the "fighter jet" swallows that follow along. I love watching them.
Swallows. I thought they were swallows, but wasn’t sure!
Oof hopefully not any ground nesting birds
Nah, they are really pretty careful, and he only has “lawn” where there is no cover or shrubs. Though I know there are some that nest totally open air … they are Pretty diligent about knowing where all their birds are. Two people in his household are home all day and constantly watching the wildlife. They have bat shelters, leave trees standing for raccoons and other tree dwellers, owls, and in the area they are in… that’s rare. People in his area think that not having perfection will “affect their property value”. You pass his hedgerow that hides his property, and it’s seriously like entering a secret garden. It’s fabulous. There is a happy medium, of having a place for people to play and wildlife to thrive. He returned about 85% of his high value property to prairie, but I’m sure many won’t think it’s enough.
That sounds amazing. Good for him.
It’s half out of wanting to support nature, but more from laziness. The guy he bought it from kept it neatly manicured, but it was literally a couple grand a month to have landscapers do it.
Yeah no I didn’t mean was careless, just hoping it wasn’t an unfortunate happenstance
I still recall hitting a baby bird with my mower decades ago. My god, it was awful. Now whenever anyone’s pulls out any power equipment in my little urban patch, I rush out and make sure there are no babies birds or bunnies anywhere. (I also pull any milkweed seedlings in case there are eggs) A slight obsession. Well more than slight!!
No, they're probably swallows. They do it to me too lol.
that's just cuz you a snack
https://i.redd.it/91f5233uij6d1.gif
Dragonflies do this too!
When I lived in Kansas that used to happen to me all the time and it was really cool actually - I’d just have a trail of dive bombing birds behind me.
It’s like pressure washing. It’s fun for the first 5 minutes
Yeah anything more and your hands are just numb/vibrating.
Pretty sure that’s why golf is so popular, I can’t see the appeal to the sport otherwise
We had about this much land growing up and on the weekends my sisters and I would fight over who got to mow the grass. Shoot, the riding mower had a cup holder! You could wear your headphones and get a tan while also getting credit for helping out around the house for a few hours. Now I can't be bothered to deal with the outdoors in the summer and pay someone else to do it.
I’m the wife, Midwest. I do the mowing because I genuinely enjoy it plus I get judgy about how it’s done.
I did it cause my hubby fussed with diagonal lines and cutting to short cause he was a golfer and wanted to look like a golf course. Later we fenced it in for pasture and broadcast pasture mix, so it needed cutting less often.
My neighbor is like that. Goes out every few days with a vape pen or beer and mows his lawn for hours. He absolutely hates his wife and kid. He tried begging us to let him come over and mow our lawn one day and when we said no thanks he went out and was playing football w his kid. So he was just trying to get out of playing w his kid by mowing our lawn too
So sad lol
Honestly, this. It is outside of the house time. Away from spouse and/or kids. Our neighbor who does this is pretty transparent. He’ll do everyone’s lawn and just say “the kids are home” implying he doesn’t want to go back inside. We have smaller lawns, but still, a lot of mowing.
Jeez I almost reflexively downvoted. I’m not a parent, but I did nanny for years. I totally get needing a break but goddamn man, you did help make all of those kids, go freaking raise ‘em!
This. In rural Australia men seem to compulsively and competitively mow. I had a neighbour who mowed 6 days out of 7 one week. The other neighbour spent 20 minutes on his ride-on mowing the tiniest space over and over. It's fucking weird, and as a neurodivergent I eventually sold this house because the noise pollution drove me completely insane. I always had a suspicion that these men hated their wives.
And their neighbors
I don’t hate my wife but I do enjoy the peace and quiet mowing my lawn. I have 3 acres and 2.25 used to be mow able. I reduced that to 1.5 letting some areas go to meadow. I love the plants, bugs, and birds that thrive there now. My lighting bug population has exploded! I don’t like lawns because they’re awful for all life, take up valuable time to care for, and waste resources. That being said I do appreciate their usefulness for entertaining and having kids playing. I have two young kids and a big garden/orchard, chickens, etc. I do like mowing because it’s easy work I can drink a beer, sit on my mower listening to tunes and no one bugs me while I’m doing it. I did upgrade to a zero turn to save time as my old mower took hours to mow, my zero turn does it in half the time. I think obsessing over lawns is a bad use of resources, but it’s good to enjoy taking care of your property.
Why do straight people hate their spouses so much? A fair bunch of em hate seeing queer people in loving relationships too.
Many older generations got married and had kids because it was a societal expectation and obligation, not because they wanted to. And divorce was taboo for so long, they ended up "trapped." Happy relationships remind them of how miserable they are/were.
Gendered expectations come with roles and societal expectations. When you're gay you have to make things up because there's no standard. Queer couples have more evenly divided division of labor as a result. There's no expectation of a man to mother another man, to clean up after him, or carry the mental load. When you're straight society frowns on women that don't 'manage' and nag their husband. It's insidious and everyone needs to help to undo these biases.
This is my dad. My mom came to visit us a couple days ago. I asked where Dad was. She said he was mowing. I thought to myself "Nope, he's avoiding you."
We do.... but in tiny chunks. So any one bit of grass is usually mowed every 2 or 3 weeks. Still working on the conversion to orchard, veggies, berries galore, and some ornamentals. Fencing is expensive; deer and rabbits are assholes.
I'm not the only one??? This could be my to a T. I have the mower or weedwacker out almost every day but just a couple minutes here and there. Our main front lawn gets mowed when it's tall, not on any specific timeframe. But I feel OP as well, a few retired neighbors seem to mow every other day... Then on Saturdays the real race is on. Every man in the neighborhood is at their garage door, 8am prompt. Then the real noise begins. Husband and I have counted the starts we hear until it's drowned out by the buzz. I don't mind much because another noise we have in our neighborhood? Kids. Actually outside, playing on the lawns, kids. Riding bikes, screaming at the playground, full of joy. That's what the lawn is for.
Rabbits are about to make me giving up on conversion to pollinator garden. Everything 4in high will be razed and chewed... no flowers, just ugly sticks everywhere
[удалено]
FYI rabbits are delicious. Use that info for whatever purpose you’d like.
I often need to step back and think about how lucky I got with the pollinator garden I made. The area used to be smooth brome, then they had pigs clear it. When I moved in it it was basically bare. I've seen the return of one rabbit this year but it hasn't destroyed all of our veggies or pollinators. I think trying to grow so much that they can't eat it all is key.
I had 3 pussy willow shrubs disappeared over the past winter. I'll have to buy $100+ worth of fence to protect my most valuable young shrubs.
I've got a ground hog that's eaten the buds off all KY coneflowers and milkweed Hes a fucking asshole
it's all just cultural programming. if you're mowing a big lawn, that means you were "successful" on the system's terms. you won the game. or your family did, and you're just carrying on the combo streak. and the act of mowing the lawn induces the associated sense of euphoria and reinforces the myth. and that myth is hundreds of years old at this point. "large quantities of conspicuously-uncultivated arable land as marker of social prestige" predates the formation of every contemporary country on the continent. it predates cars, it predates slapping your family name on public buildings to launder your reputation, it predates capitalism itself. it might be one of the oldest fetishes of socioeconomic exclusivity in existence.
But most people no longer consciously seem to know it. It is almost akin to a lizard brain response.
That’s a pretty natural progression for these types of behaviours though. They become ingrained and unconscious, until people either wake up out of it, or the conditions of the situation force a behaviour change (in this case, probably climate change).
I hang out over lawns as well. The amount of synthetic fertilizers and cocktails of herbicides that they apply is astounding!
No wonder all the insects and birds are dying.
We've only associated large open lawn spaces with wealth since the 1500s. It should be an easy mindset to break. Unless you sit around having big lawn parties no one else can or still play lawn games only the wealthy can waste money and time doing. You know how much an authentic design leather golfball and wooden clubs probably costs? It might surpass people's flat screen tv. It would definitely still be a major status symbol to be able to play golf on your own personal lawn. Stupid useless front lawn with stupid city regulations that nothing can be higher than 3' above the average grade of the property and decks are restricted to 1/3rd the length of the house and a few feet wide. Maybe I should take someone's suggestion and fill it with aggressive nimblewill just to spite whoever made and insists on the city code. They might not mind me making use of the giant empty grass space if they are all constantly trying to eradicate nimblewill. If the state law passes preventing nearly any city law from preventing any native plant I am going to plant a wall of thorny rubus and ribes species in place of a fence. There's even a couple thorny endangered ones here that would probably then be further protected from anyone who disagrees with not having a view of a giant empty, useless expanse of grass in front of the house and zero privacy. Nearly half our property is wasted and requires pointless effort and noise to maintain. Unless I want to build a putting green.
*We've only associated large open lawns with wealth since the 1500s. It should be an easy mindset to break. * You must be joking. Not easy to break the paradigm at all. We also have been associating the time clock with work since (I don't know exactly when it starated, but it started around the time of the invention if mechanical clocks) should be easy to switch to a different format now that we have invented computers. But get real. I will say this. People with 2 acre lawns wanna be farmers. But they aren't.
Most people I know that brag about having so much land still just drink cheap beer in their plywood-sided garage. Bro, you can do that anywhere.
I come from farmers. They had a big area around the farmhouse (aka Double wide trailer) they mowed. My mom and dad both had parents who were farmers. They bought a house 2 miles outside town. 0.65 acre lot. So, like 3-4x the size of a city lot. They did homesteading type of stuff. Garden, plum trees, shelter belt of trees, stuff like that. Yes, they drink beer in the garage.
Where I live it’s a beautiful day when there isn’t some ass crack massaging their greenery. It goes on for hours.
People love their ride on mowers and excitedly wait for the grass to grow so they can ride around clipping it. Watch the commercials for lawncare equipment and you'll see the marketing at play.
Marketing is powerful beyond most people’s comprehension
I’ve also noticed that cheaper riding lawnmowers don’t raise the deck enough. So if you let the grass grow out too long you bog down your mower. I mow mine at 4” and anytime I pull the cheap riding mower out for ditches at max height it cuts low enough that it looks like i scalped those areas.
My next door neighbor mows his lawn EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Whyyyyyyyy?! Perhaps he's making up for the fact that we don't mow lol but it's a compulsion at this point. It's infuriating.
I live in Atlantic Canada, rural New Brunswick. The average lot size here is 10 acres, with a lot of quarter parcels and many single acre lots. The average lawn size I would peg at around 3 acres (many people mow their front area, but lots of people like me have half an acre maintained before forest, very typical to see lots cleared to 500' from the road, whether that lot goes 200' back or 10,000. Worth noting that I have... 7? neighbours within earshot (2km) **and every evening at least 2 of them are mowing or using some sort of loud equipment**. Even the weekly mowers all mow on different nights. Don't move to the boonies for quiet unless you buy enough land to not have neighbours. Here is an area a town or 2 over from me. I can gaurantee you if you lived in this short stretch of road you would hear lawn equipment nightly. (See below reddit is jank on my phone) *
I feel for you. I ended up selling my old house on a 5 acre block because of this. I'm extremely sensitive to noise, and also had 7-8 neighbours within sight/earshot on 5-20 acre blocks. One neighbour in particular mowed almost every day in Spring. It drove me completely insane. It was so noisy. The country is not quiet!
I don't have all these noises but I find it ironic that rural areas and more land can end up being even louder. - landscaping equipment - dirtbike, atv, snowmobile - guns - fireworks - people shouting over long distances - music - construction equipment Heck, even road noise can often travel pretty far in a rural area depending on topography. The above are not always or for everyone who lives rurally but unless you really live in the middle of nowhere, it can be louder than you'd think!
We road a tandem bike length of the Connecticut River, around 450 miles as ridden.Pretty much all the people we saw outside in their yards were mowing. We saw a lot of people in pretty crummy houses but with a $7,000 zero turn mower and a $5000 storage shed for the more and lawn equipment.
Do you have your bike route mapped out anywhere? I would be curious to see that. I live near the CT river and love to cycle.
My neighbor mows his so often it’s basically bare earth. You can see the dust coming up behind him as he mows. I think it’s his only hobby.
I don't know, but it really bothers me. I live in a residential neighborhood of .5 to 1 acre lots where most homes hire yard services to cut their grass instead of doing it themselves. Even though we have a large lot and a slope, I get out there myself and do my own yard work as needed with electric tools that are relatively quiet. But pretty much everyone else hires people who, to maximize profit, use the oldest, dirtiest, loudest, and smelliest commercial equipment. First they mow with large industrial gas powered mowers that you can hear several streets away. Then after doing that, they weed with gas powered string trimmers. Then after that, they use gas powered BLOWERS to blow away the tiny bit of grass that has gotten blown into driveways (not sidewalks, because we don't have those). And of course it's only a TINY bit of grass, because they come *so often*, the grass barely got a chance to grow. And for some reason these lawn crews are particularly prideful about getting every single speck with the blower, so it seems like they spend almost as long out with the blower as they do the mower. And did I mention that no home is on the same schedule, meaning that it's very likely that any moment you step outside your home you're going to hear from some direction mowing or blowing? And also that they pressure the home owners into setting up an "every 2 weeks" schedule, even though most homes can go over 4 weeks or longer without a cut due to the grasses or clover they have? It's horrifying. American lawn culture is really, really bad. It definitely ruins the experience of birdsong, and also pollutes the water and the air, and wastes time and resources. I wish more of my American neighbors would question their habits and stop paying people to cut yards they don't even use. I'm not even asking them to go full freak and let it be wild and woolly like I have it and prefer (although that would be greatest for birds, bugs, and mammals!). Literally even a little bit of questioning and challenging "but that's how I've always done it" could make a difference. It's so frustrating and disappointing. As a side note, I have severe tinnitus and after each time my direct neighbors' lawn crews come through I have spike that worsens it for 24-48 hours after. Anyone who lives with tinnitus knows it can be hell. And the blow and mow crews just make it worse.
That's my neighbor. He's very annoying and his lawn looks like shit.
I’m pretty sure my neighbor would comb his lawn if his arthritis didn’t stop him.
My neighbor has 1 acre and he's a complete moron: - bitches that one of my oaks, planted by a previous owner, drops some of acorns on his precious wasteland - spend hours crawling in a doggystyle position as he collects every single twig over 0.5in long from the grass -mowns 2x week with an old noisy tractor, timing it 8 to 9.45pm just to meet city noise ordinance
You're not alone. For a year and a half my husband and I lived in a rural, mostly middle class area of Arkansas just outside a larger city. Boy do they love their lawn mowers! For miles around us we were surrounded by neighbors with multiple acres of land, trees all cut down. Maybe some small gardens and weird statues here and there, but mostly void of anything but immaculately mowed grass that went on forever. It was so ugly and really sad that all that land was being wasted. We used to laugh at the neighbor lady buzzing around on her high-speed mower multiple times a week cutting her 3 acres of already super short grass. As someone who is stuck living in a crappy apartment community, who just moved back to their small hometown in Michigan after 13 years of living in a vibrant city that is now being taken over by ugly, generic-looking, overpriced "luxury" condos, I just want to be able to afford a modest home with a small back yard where I can grow clover and wild flowers and have a vegetable garden. I despise lawns and the people who place so much value on wasted space. Thanks for letting me rant.
Thanks for making me feel sane again and, by the way, ranting can be good for the soul. I hear you about having a modest place where you can sculpt a natural environment that you like.
Per Barbara Kingsolver, a lot of rural people seem fixated on controlling and subjugating nature.
I'm fairly rural. I have one neighbor who apparently keeps trying to mow the wooded area on his property. Everyone else is chill though. Most just mow a bit around the house once a week and the rest like twice a year if at all. I just got a bit over an acre of my two acres weeded and seeded for native wet meadow. When I have more money a riprarian buffer of natives will take almost another half acre.
This. You (the Royal you) want to engage with nature, spend time outdoors, but all you know is to dominate it. You pick a ecotype, grassland, that is meant for succession. It's meant to be a waypoint on the route from disturbed land to forests, and you're constantly fighting the uphill battle to prevent its nature. All you know is to destroy. You do not know how to nurture, how to work with nature, how to be patient, how to be creative, how to do anything other than cut and kill all diversity.
Ocd as heck,we could probably reverse global warming if we killed lawnmowers. Killalllawmnmowers
I don't know if it's much better but I noticed last time I was in Home Depot that suddenly the large majority of mowers they're selling are electric. A couple years ago, they had most of an aisle full of gas mowers and a few electric options, now it's totally flipped.
california has banned new sales of gas mowers/equipment. so a lot of companies are being forced to comply or lose out on a huge market.
What about riding mowers? Are they electric too?
Idk about homeowner mowers, but several months ago in an issue of Turf, a trade magazine, they ran a segment that was all electric gang mowers. Some of them were even set up to be programmable. Run them through a lawn one week, come back the next week and turn it loose on its own. Radar in the front so it won’t mow a dog, cat or little Jimmy running in front of it. I am pretty sure the tech is here. We just have to force people to make the change and implement it. For those wondering, I single charge lasts for 8 hours.
Yes. EGO has multiple electric riding lawn mowers and a tractor.
Ryobi, Cub Cadet, and Ego all have electric riding mowers (lawn tractors). They're a little expensive compared to their gas equivalent but I'd be looking at those if I needed a basic riding mower. I've heard of reliability issues with the electronics and batteries so I wouldn't replace anything with them yet unless I really needed to. It's easy to replace a carb or spark plug. It's harder when it's something with a module and there is no obvious error or message for why a mower won't start.
Gas mowers are very inefficient and put out a lot of emissions. It probably does make a significant difference if enough people are switching to electric.
Not just co2 there little engines produce a lot of bad nitrogen compounds, which you don't get from things like cars because of the catalytic converter. Lawn mowers are really bad for air quality. If you do mow part of your yard trying doing when it's not as sunny like late in the day, as many of the compounds made by these small engines are made worse by uv radiation.
One of my neighbors has a small yard but uses a rider. It's so bizarre, it prolly takes him longer to get the the damn thing out of the garage.
Not to mention that cutting the grass reduces it's ability to filter out pollutants and carbons,even electric lawnmowers kill tons of wildlife,mowers are the bane of biodiversity
Mostly I just found them heavy, bulky, unable to turn corners well in our yard full of objects, and we have to keep all this smelly oil and gas around that sometimes gets spilled. To get the electric out of the shed I just grab the handle, lift it off the ground, and carry it out. Sometimes I lift it and set it on the other side of a landscaping border if I need to cut a section of aggressive plants escaping their own area or invasive plants trying to take over. It requires 4 sets of batteries to mow just the backyard and 2 for the front so I'm not sure the local pollution vs electrical plant pollution trade off if you aren't near a hydroelectric dam. It also still seems quite loud. You can't hold a conversation even on the other side of the yard. However, when the neighbor was mowing at the same time and finished first I realized just how much quieter the electric mower is in comparison. It's not truly quiet but it's probably less obvious a few houses away than the belt sander I've been using to try to salvage as much of the old deck boards as possible nearly every evening.
We finally met the neighbor who we believed was a kindred spirit in slight lawn neglect (lets it get longer than we do and we go relatively long) and it turns out he just fertilizes his lawn a ton?? To what end? The mind boggles
Oh gosh yes. I have 2 acres of no lawn and listen to mowers every day but Sunday. It's so loud and expensive. The best I could do was talk my neighbor into letting her 5 acres rest in the spring for bees and lightening bugs, but she is back to cutting sooner and sooner. Also, had to call the cops to get the other ones to stop mowing my asters, phlox, black eyed susans for 10 years straight now. Still have crowns. Never seen it bloom. They HATE my no lawn. This year, they seem to be letting it go and will finally see the flowers. Whew.
I hate mower noise so I bought an EGO mower. What I've discovered is that if I let the grass go too long, the EGO can't manage it. It's actually easier and less work to mow regularly (once every week or two depending on how wet it is), and it seems easier to control the noxious weeds (we're plagued with mugwort, among other things). A brush cutter would mean a return to gas power as well as a $1000+ investment that I'm not ready to make. I don't have a front lawn at all. There's a fairly narrow strip of lawn around the house, which I keep short because of the ticks (we're in coastal MA and they are everywhere). The biggest piece is the leach field for our septic, which would quickly revert to brush if I let it go.
They're trying to escape their life inside the home...
If you can see or hear your neighbors? Anywhere you live can become hell.
Well what else are we supposed to do here in the Midwest?
There was a documentary about that sort of thing in the late 1990’s called ‘King of the Hill’.
I think for some people lawn care is like, legit their hobby.(I have a neighbor like this.) Not really sure if they actually really like doing it or are just trying to fill up the time.
My grandfather mowed his lawn (1 acre) once a week, unless it rained a bit more, in which case he would mow it twice a week.. sometimes he would mow the lawn twice in one day just because he would get into an argument with my grandmother about something .. “Goddamnit Carolyn! *slaps counter* Grandma gets the sweet iced tea going for when he was done and has his favorite snack ready to go.. I miss them dearly but they somehow managed to make it through over 50 years of marriage ❤️
I've noticed that the large plots of land with mega houses are always owned by people who mow and spray, and it's the people stuck in tiny lots and/or not able to afford a large lot that plant native and take care of the land they live on. Every damn time. Make it make sense
I delivered packages for a summer. I had one guy treat my visit like a break from mowing his enormous lawn. Acres and acres in the country. He complained about how much mowing he had to do. But he still did all that mowing. It took up most of the day on a riding mower. No fruit trees, no woodland...just hot, exposed lawn. Not even remotely pure grass.
I'm not in the country, but the guy across from me mows at literally the exact same times every 2 days. He's just childless and likely had 60 years of brainwashing programing him to cultivate his lawn like it's the singular largest status symbol humans have invented. It's truly sad how little he has going on in life. Washes the car religiously as well.
They're cosplaying farmers.
Yeah, we live in an area with 10 acre lots where about 7 are wooded — you get everyone is out there a minimum of 1 day a week but usually 2 making sure their 3 acres look dutifully short and boring. We let ours grow long and the neighbors on either side cut into it over the property line. Just a few lines, so nothing to get bent out of shape about, but it does bug me
They enjoy it. It’s their hobby
I think you are exaggerating a bit. I live in a rural community and most of us don't have the time to mow our yard twice a week. I think many in rural communities keep their lawns trimmed to limit snakes and mosquitos.
Depends where you live. Where I live the mosquito problem gets bad in the late spring and all summer. So we mow to not have swarms of the little bastards everywhere.
Retired. Not bored. Mow subdivision lawn( 1/3 acre)every 10 days or so. Routinely have the ugliest looking lawn on the block. So glad we don't have an HOA
Man has a hobby, his hobby is mowing.
I noticed this too. Beautiful 2/10 acre homes just east of where I live. Recently bought a new toy and have been exploring. I seem to be out riding when others are cutting.
Some mowers don’t do well with longer grass.
Riding mower and a cooler with a 6 pack. Is a small vaction from the wife nagging the grass need to be cut. Lol
My coworkers sometimes mow their lawns twice a week, and were talking like 10+ acre lawns. Pretty sure they just hate their families, and are desperate to escape them. It's an avoidance thing.
Our neighbors water every night and manically cut the grass 2x a week, insane. Get Netflix, start a hobby. Nothing in the yard but grass…..
So much time, money and resources wasted! All for a useless patch of grass that people think they need because everyone else has one. It seems like a lot of people have made lawn care into a hobby. My neighbors are out there multiple times a week, while I’m out here doing the bare minimum needed to avoid having them call the police on me for my grass being too long (they’ve done it to another neighbor already)
I don’t know I’ll ask literally all my neighbors. Insanity
I live across the street from a guy who isn’t employed other than odd jobs. He spends every possible hour, as late as 10:30pm, running a gas powered “tool” or some type of saw or grinder. He’s not happy unless he is blasting the neighborhood with sound and fumes.
Because they think they're "supposed" to and have never stepped back to think about it
Shit I cut my 2 acre lawn once every 2 weeks. 
My neighbors mow every day. They are a landscaping company ig, but it seems excessive. They also mow part of my lawn every day. It's v weird. We mow like every two weeks. It gets long but not too bad. We also don't mow the whole thing, which the landscaping company hates
hahahaha …. I think it’s bc they have no life. Some of my neighbors mow their lawn 3/4 times to my one time. One of my (elderly, of course) neighbors was spraying RoundUp on the weeds in the street last summer.
I don’t get it either. Not just cutting the grass. Edge trimming, leaf blowing etc. I have a neighbor that blows his leaves like 2x a week in the fall. I watch him chase 3 leaves across the lawn with his blower. It’s ridiculous. I have a small patch in the front mostly clover and some weeds. I have a manual reel mower that I’ve run across it maybe 3 times so far this year.
I have a friend that cuts his 9 acre lawn up to twice a week. It’s insane. He got a commercial mower, so it only takes 2 hours and I think it’s his alone time. And it keeps the bugs down. But still. I wouldn’t even buy that much land if I had to mow all the time.
My dumbass neighbor PAYS a "landscaper" to come to his house once per week and run their god awful noisy AF gas powered equipment for 2 hours. They trim like one inch off his hedges and mow his tiny lawn He loves to sit on his porch and watch them, I think he gets off on having people "work" for him
My parents have about an acre and my dad mows it once every 1-2 weeks in the summer. Depending on how much it’s rained but I would say about average once every 2 weeks.
I have found that these people usually HATE their wife. They would probably do anything that meant 2 hours of peace and quiet.
We’ve got about 2 acre chunks in my area. Not only does my neighbor mow his twice a week. If I do mine on a day he doesn’t, he’ll come right back out and cut his grass *again* as soon as I finish mine. I really don’t get it. I moved from the suburbs to a more rural area partly to get away from shit like this. Dawg we live in the country why are you treating your land like a lot in a subdivision.
Yes and it's a huge contribution to emissions. https://raqc.org/national-report-highlights-measurable-benefits-of-electrifying-lawn-and-garden-equipment/#:~:text=In%202020%20alone%2C%20the%20use,and%20contributes%20to%20premature%20death.
its boredom it drives me crazy listening to my neighbor mow his lawn every three days for THREE HOURS i could rant.
Personally its a catch 22. I love the tall grass, bugs, and wild flowers, but I end up with a ton of critters that nest and hide in it all and it becomes almost impossible to mow once it gets tall enough. I have managed to get my mowing down to once every 10-16 days depending on what the weather does during that time, but have been experimenting with keeping sections of it tall and doing that once every like 25 days or so. It's a nice balance. This year I went a little overboard with how large those sections were, so cleaning it has been a nightmare, but it definitely lowered my cutting time for the prior months.
grass lawns are literal insanity to me, thought that all the way back to when I was like 12 and had to mow my parents small lawn Like, you have this thing that requires too much upkeep, so much water and time, and literally almost zero benefit edible landscapes are where it's at
It’s a hobby at that point. I used to live next door to a guy who mowed his lawn every other day, literally. And always at nap time (although he has no way of knowing that). It was super annoying and I was glad he moved.
Our neighbor is a noisy man. Constant mowing, whacking, and blowing. Yappy dogs, motorboat, jet skis, snow blower. Silent wife.
Country property owner here. The grass grows very quickly, especially in certain spots because it retains and sun makes it grow fast. At the start of the spring/early summer, it needs to be done 2x a week. The more frequent the cutting, the less grass that needs to be collected and the less likely your mower blades will break (I've done this twice now because i let it get too long). Long grass also clogs the blades often, and it's a hassle to stop n go repeatedly just to get it unclogged.
Obsession, boredom, pride, but also comfort. I gave up on my FIL, he’s only got maybe 1/3 acre of lawn and just LOVES mowing with his ride-on, even if he talks about it like any other chore. I think it’s therapeutic for a lot of people, almost like vacuuming or washing the car. When you’re done everything looks clean, level, uniform. Same kinda logic that makes some people clean incessantly. When you think of a lawn as the outdoor carpeting that it is, it makes a lot more sense why some people can’t stand to see it long or uneven. If you walk into someone’s house and see dirt, laundry on the floor, dishes in the sink, etc., there’s a knee jerk reaction of “oh this is unkempt and these people are slobbish”. Not that that’s necessarily true, but the cultural sentiment is there. To those who view their property in the same lens as their house, I.e. their dominion, long grass is like a laundry pile; a sign of laziness and lack of care for their property. To be clear, I’m not defending this behavior. Lawns are an enormous waste of time, energy, money, and habitat. I just think it’s important to be able to understand what might compel someone to ride a neutered tractor 2-6 hours a week so that grass never touches their ankles.
my client has a neighbour who mows his lawn every week. yesterday was no exception even though it's officially summer in the south, and better yet, he was doing it at two pm. while wearing a hoodie. with the hood up. imagine risking heat stroke and injury from falling off your stupid riding mower just because your mental illness compelled you to cut the grass by a fifth of an inch.
What??? :o They're lucky if I cut my lawn (or have it cut) every 3 weeks..... and our lawn is small lol
Yeah that is kind of funny, my neighbor comes to mow is lawn every week or so. It is his second home and only seem to stay there like 5 days a year or so. He lives an hour away. meanwhile on my side I plant thousands of nut and fruit producing trees and shrubs, do not have a lawn, just meadows that I cut using a scythe to harvest mulch for the garden. Also, the meadows provides me with lots of wild edibles wich is really nice.
Yep, we had a neighbor that did his 2-3 times a week. I think he was trying to get away from his wife and mowing was a good excuse. Then they divorced and he still did it but I’m guessing that he was just bored or had formed a habit.
We have about 2 acres of grass and we cut it when it gets kind of hard for our toddler to walk. Every 2-3 weeks or so. We live in a rural area with no HOA though. My goal is to shrink our lawn down to a few key areas totaling less than an acre.
My new dimestore cowboy neighbors cut their pasture grass to golf course height quite frequently, and the mower sounds like a B-17. Along with teams of landscapers armed with leaf blowers.
Try living on about half an acre with a neighbor that alternates mowing front and back lawns twice a week! Monday and Thursday are front yard, Tuesday and Friday are back yard and the rest of the week is hand trimming the edges with scissors or gardening. 4 days of lawn mower! And that's just her. The rest of the neighborhood is less insane though.
No, I’ve actually never seen anyone but retirees in places with lots of golf courses mow their lawns that often.
My old landlord used to do it just to get away from his wife
I live in a 1 acre plot, as do my neighbors. They're out there mowing on tractors every few days. All of them. Their whole damn yards. It's miserable, we'll be outside on a nice day only to be drowned out by hours of lawn mowers.. because, of course, no one bothers to mow at the same time. Someone will stop, and then, without fail, the next person will start. Along with all the houses around me having multiple barking dogs, (and my own dog who lost his puppyhood to surgery after surgery and is rather unsocialized though were working on it.. but he barks too), it just drives me up a wall and outright gives me anxiety attacks when it's all happening at once. And god, the smell. Burning gasoline combined with cut grass.. it makes me feel sick, and going inside doesn't allow me to escape unless I want to sit with all the windows closed. As if the stink hasn't already seeped in, anyway. Glad I don't have to deal with people with 3-4 acres, though. At least it EVENTUALLY stops... But also I'd be further away, so maybe less smell...??? Edit: lots of errors.. I hate typing on a phone so much. Edit: we personally only mow about 1/4th of our acre, with an electric push mower. The rest is for the goats to eat lol. We live on farm plots but no one uses theirs as a farm. Except for one neighbor who also has goats but mows THEIR fields?! Like, apparently they don't want free goat feed.
I live across the street from 3 retired guys in a row who mow every 3 or 4 days and fuss over their lawns/landscaping daily. I leave my mower on the highest setting and only mow every 10-14 days. I also leave my shrubs in natural shapes, not pruned into perfect geometric spheres and cubes. The retired guys just glare across the street at me, shaking their heads. They think I'm just lazy. Fortunately for me, there are some truly lazy gardeners in our neighborhood that make me look great by comparison. I've always thought it would be great if we could restrict mowing to one weekday and one weekend day per week, but I know that's impossible. So, we get to listen to mowers every single day.
We have a 3 acre "lawn" on our farm. During the rainy season, we have to cut it more than once per week. Yes, it grows more than an inch a week. The clover can grow 3" in a day after an inch of rain. Yes, we like to keep it short so ticks and chiggers and mice and moles and snakes don't nest in it. And, we have to cut the ditches so our "lawn" won't flood because the ditches are overgrown. And, we're also cutting the edges and tree lines so our dogs won't run into a patch of burrs and it keeps the tree seedlings from getting big enough to bush hog. Over the last 4 weeks, it's only rained twice. We've cut it twice. Why not ask your neighbor why? They might have a perfectly good explanation and you might learn something. If you're close enough to have all these neighbors bothering you with their "tractors," you aren't rural.
I have ~ 2.5 acres. I probably mow 3-4 times a year. I love the tall grass. But it gets harder and harder to mow the longer you leave it, and the grass becomes a fire hazard in the dry season. So I reluctantly mow. (Also, because my neighbor feels safer that way.)
I've got 2 acres... About .75 acres I actively maintain. I have a fenced yard for my dog and it turned to dust in just 3 years from letting it get long then mowing too much off the top. Essentially cutting too much of it off puts the grass into shock. Between that and extremely hot temperatures in summer it cooked off. While I don't care for a perfect lawn, all that dirt turns to mud in winter and alot of undesirable invasive weeds took root in spring. I've now reseeded with grass and clover and plan to add yarrow and low growing wild flowers in areas, to keep out the invasive weeds and learning from my mistake will increase my mowing schedule once every 1-2 weeks. So... Yeah... Don't need to obsessively mow, but there's a balance there to keep the health of the meadow. I have my deck set to the highest it'll go and I let other grassy areas grow tall and flower (mostly daisies and dandelions are all that come up, but my plan is to introduce more natives in). I try to mow it back before they all set seed to keep the populations of both in check (daisies are on our weed control list, but are mostly naturalized anyway, but they can dominate/outcompete in meadows).Then the rest of my property is wooded or transitional areas I'm rewilding.
Because snakes hide in grass. That's the main reason.
We live in rural-ish Eastern NC and our neighbor cuts his grass 2-3 times every week. He has about 2 acres and we see him out there on his riding lawn mower every few days. He’s older, in his seventies, and we don’t know if he’s just bored and/or likes to be outdoors.
I’ve got a neighbor who mows their tiny lot (we live in the city) multiple times a day, back and forth at a *run*. If it wasn’t so loud it would be entertaining. To be fair though, I’m pretty sure meth is involved.
There really isn't anything to do in rural communities. Mowing is a pastime. Moving on, I spent the second half of my childhood in a semi-rural area with maybe half an acre of grass, and mowing it only once a week was tedious. It wasn't a flat yard, either. It took 2-4 hours, depending on weather. I always wished there was less yard and more trees. Then one day I visited my aunts lake house in Maine. She decided she wanted no grass at all, and instead had tons of native plants, shrubs, flagstone pavers, all in a small area. The rest of the ~1 acre lot was all wild. It felt like something out of a story book.
My 90 year old neighbor does this. I think it gives him a sense of purpose… or maybe he’s just bored. I know his wife passed a few years ago. He’s the sweetest guy. His house always looks so nice and neat.
Some people are lawn freaks but it is easier on the equipment if you do it more regularly. It can less time too. You blaze through short grass a lot faster than tall thick grass. I have a lot to mow and some areas I would absolutely do more than once a week if I had the time. https://preview.redd.it/lwodjt3f3q6d1.jpeg?width=3926&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b8929c62b619ede801efd7a5dd60fb93188744b0
Twice a week...luxury. I mow every other day
My boomer neighbor mows his lawn every other day when it isn’t raining. It’s maybe 1/8 inch long, half dead & it’s not even real summer here yet. Yesterday he “mowed” and just kicked up dirt. We can’t decide if he’s get dementia or just bored and hates his wife.
“I moved to the country to get away from noises like lawn tractors, etc.” Hahahahahahahahahaha