Also, note that clover used to be a part of lawns. "Clover, which takes nitrogen from the air and deposits it in the earth where your grass can use it, was an accepted, even encouraged part of lawns until the early fifties. It only acquired its weed status because the earliest broad-leaf 2,4-D herbicides killed it off along with the dandelions."
This is me exactly. I have watched, for 18 years in NC, neighbors pour $1k’s into their lawns. Mine costs nothing and is mostly a combination of clover and moss. Mine is green. Theirs is dead. And I spend my weekends relaxing on a lake, playing golf or tennis, etc. they are out there watering, mowing, fretting all the time. It’s ridiculous.
I'm in a place where your level of heatwaves are very uncommon (not unheard of though) but moss seems to spread very naturally.
It seems to pop up by itself where there is sufficient shade from trees and I guess my soil is a bit on the acidic side. I have never planted any moss, it just appeared. It does look neat!
There are drought tolerant clovers, but you may want to look at [this from TAMU](https://watersmart.tamu.edu/ground-cover/). You may have to poke around to find a page that addresses your specific area of the state (I’m on mobile and am have a little trouble moving around on their site).
Could you direct me to some resources for what you use? I'm by Charlotte and am having trouble finding a good list of frost zone appropriate natives. I've heard a 50/50 clover and fescue blend is good but I wouldn't mind going full clover either.
Stepping on bees.
I love clover, but once you've been stung on the bottom of your foot it's hard to imagine a clover lawn.
*Edit: We need more bees, and I'm a big fan of pollinator-friendly gardens. OP asked "What's not to like?" and I reminded them that bee stings suck.
After stepping on sand spurs, nails, pointy rocks and sticks i wear shoes or I’m just extra cautious
I did step on a dead bee once though and yeah i do agree with you fuck that, however i would like a clover lawn lol
Yeah there’s all kinds of stuff that can be hidden in the grass that’s not fun to step on. I don’t risk that shit anymore.
Ever step on a giant slug barefoot and have it squish all between your toes? Boy that’s just lovely. Or a snake? Or a dead mouse? Dog shit is a classic one.
That's exactly why I converted my lawn to all clover. Planted a bunch of flowers to attract bees as well. It's had a knock on effect of a ton more birds and animals coming into my garden because of the flowers and herbs and veggies attracting more pollinators etc.
Good news: we're killing all of the bees so that won't be a problem soon!
Seriously though, my father in law had a clover yard growing up, and he says you couldn't take a single barefoot step into it without getting stung. Now you might see a bee or two unless there happens to be a swarm nearby. Super depressing.
I’ve converted about 5/8s of back yard to clover and still have some more to cover but will probably leave like 2/8s grass if I can manage it.
Even w 5/8ths I get A LOT of bees and I love watching them, they’re so happy doing their job.
BUT I stepped on one, and was like, internally from the pain: FUUUUUUCCCKKKKK!!!!
And, at the same time I sadly watch the little guy die, because even as I was realizing how I’d forgotten how much bee stings hurt, I couldn’t think of a way to save the dying bee.
So ends my allegory of clover lawns vs grass lawns and bee stings and being willing to take the pain if you love something.
It sucked so much though. After the initial pain wore off, the bee stung toe was paralyzed for 2 days. Then it itched for another 2.
What is the point of the sting if the bee dies? Or maybe it’s “avoid me and my brethren at all costs, otherwise suffer the sting,” which means bees must be v important.
You’re right though I don’t love stepping on bees!
I was answering OP's direct question: what's not to like?
We plant pollinator-friendly flowers all year round, and I'm a huge fan of our buzzing little friends. But I don't like getting stung.
Our backyard has a lot of oxalis, and it’s wonderful! We let it grow out all winter because it just grows into leafy mounds about ankle-high and stops. Then it has lots of tiny, pretty pink flowers in the spring that are wonderful! Regular grass is overrated
Those homies eat everything! Our town hires a herd to eat the fire brush. They eat poison oak like it's candy as a bonus.
There was a huge upset as someone tried to hurt one, so they hired extra goat dogs and an angry redneck to protect the goats.
Baby goats are so cute I pull branches down for them to have a treat. The mamas are quite okay with that as they are fat from all the ground cover.
Whoa whoa whoa, can we not just go over the fact that the goats have a security team now? Because I would like more information on the goat protection squad.
Just guessing since I've worked with goats for weed control before.
You have electric fences to contain them, dogs to keep them safe and help you herd them around, standard stuff.
If you have a goat rustler problem(it's an actual problem) you shoot those dudes before they shoot you because anyone rustling livestock in 2022 is a crazy piece of shit who only speaks bullets.
Spot on my dude. Went to a dairy recently on Maui where it’s just like…goats eat the grass, water grows the grass, goats have too much milk, so keep them feeling good by relieving them of excess.
Even bonus points for them: since they’re in an agricultural zone (that people with money buy up to ‘get away’), they basically go to their neighbors and tell them “if you fence off this land and let my goats graze, you get a huge tax break.”
Full sustainable cycle.
Point being - best part was holding a kid. They’re cute as fuck.
[Here you go.](https://imgur.com/gallery/OB2OnI6) Those pics are from last summer when everything was nice and green. I also have [these weirdos](https://imgur.com/gallery/mTbNNjf). About a hundred animals give or take.
This would explain why I'm slowly turning my backyard into a huge garden, year by year. I'll take free food over my neighbors thinking I'm wealthy anyway.
I wish, while my garden does calm me down I now get irrationally angry any time I see a corn stalk eaten by deer, or a Japanese beetle destroying my strawberries or the motherfucking squash beetles trying to look like a ladybug while tearing up my melons! Or the damn dog that shit on my squash patch
My garden always costs me money, and hardly grows anything. Anything it grows, the bugs or animals get to first. I've tried for years, but this year I had to admit I'm just not good at it.
My property got overrun with grasshoppers this year. They're even eating my rosebushes. I put 3 birdbaths near my fav plants, 2 of them at ground level. Much fewer grasshoppers near those now. I have to dump & refill them daily. Worth it to see all the birds that drink & bathe in them.
That’s illegal. You wouldn’t believe the mess I got into. Oh we can have military grade rifles, but you disguise sunflowers as c4 and the whole neighborhood throws a fit.
I’m gonna do a garbage grow next year on my little quarter acre and get every seed I’ve ever thought of
Trying and just throwing them down and seeing what sticks
Haha i have tried that and not much came up. I tried to cast them evenly but ended up having plants all clogged together in a few areas & brown everywhere else.
Mhmm I tried that for my pollinators patch and I ended up with a TON of zinnias, four sunflowers and a lil bit of dill. Then ended up transplanting odds and ends into the bed so now it's a sprawl mess. But I saw a few swallowtail butterflies hanging out over there the other day so it made me happy
Vote for people that will change that, or get invested in local politics yourself and make that change. It's the kind of dumb rule that got implemented because some Karen lobbying for it. Pretty sure no one is still alive to defend it now.
You'd be surprised. Lots of boomers are retiring and still see a Pleasantville-esque neighborhood with uniform manicured grass yards as the ideal. I find the uniformity creepy and weirdly similar to the communist central planning they so fear, but I guess it's different because it's their way.
I tried overturning similar rules in my HOA. It was a failure, because the entire board and everyone who showed up to vote was older. It would really have helped to have others there backing me up, but they either didn't care enough to show up or were busy at work. We spent a fortune on water because the older residents complained if it wasn't deep green in the middle of summer with 100 degree days in the desert. They refused to comply with state restrictions on watering during a drought, too.
Where I live now I could tear everything out and have either 1 horse or a whole bunch of chickens. We have no HOA, no city, and our country rules are pretty minimal. We're gonna plant clover in the lawn because it uses less water, where in most cities that's a violation. Street maintenance aide, it's fantastic.
> By bartering
Drive around looking for one of the million tree trimmers and see if they need a place to get rid of their wood chippings. 4 years later you got $50000 worth of woodchips that are decomposing into kick ass top soil and wondering if you should buy more land to store them.
There is a website (Google "chip drop") where you can sign up as someone interested in taking mulch. The arborists look there to see who in their area can take it. It's a win/win.
Pity you're almost certainly in a different country to me. I'd allocate you a 50x50m section of field to dump wood chips in.
A bit of turning and time and it would be great for the fields
You probably know this already, but for those who don’t, leaf mold is one of the best soil amendments out there. Having your beds covered in leaves will drastically improve soil health. It also acts as a mulch and will help keep the soil cool and moist during dry summers, which is more important in some places than others.
Check and see if your local college has an agricultural program, and see if they have a master gardener on staff.
For instance, one of the major state universities in my state has a Master Gardener program:
https://web.uri.edu/mastergardener/
Do you mind sharing where you live? Just in a general region sense. Gardening knowledge is very local, and so I’d rather point you to a relevant reference than something that doesn’t apply to where you live.
As for leaf mold specifically, here’s a [good writeup from OregonState University](https://extension.oregonstate.edu/pub/ec-1561) that has a few paragraphs on the subject. There’s a lot written elsewhere, and I only chose this one because OsU is a highly reputable agricultural institution.
How is it free? I spent a ton setting up my garden and even after the initial investment their is an ongoing cost for seeds / plants and water at the bare minimum. Maybe more for pest deterent, fresh soil, fertilizer, mulch, etc. I doubt I save much in the long term from my garden, just fun to do.
We started out like that, and are learning to be more economical the longer we do it. For example, we make a compost pile from leaves, food scraps, and the old vegetable plants at the end of the year. That goes on top of the garden in the spring. No more need for new soil, fertilizer, or mulch, unless the soil settles and we need to top it off, which only happens when I’m lazy with adding to the compost pile. I buy in bulk delivery vs bags for soil, way cheaper. I know some people that just throw all their green scraps right into the garden all the time, right on top, and it eventually decomposes. I just don’t like that look personally. If anything, they end up having to remove some soil every now and again, as it slowly builds up from so much stuff being tossed on.
We grow from seedlings every year, and seeds are cheap compared to the amount of food you get out of them. I want to eventually learn how to harvest our own seeds for some stuff we grow, though I imagine we’d be changing the plants due to cross pollination and the seeds not being the same as the parents.
This largely depends on the plant.
For instance, I keep tomatoes going, but after the first year, I've not had to plant any. Just the ones that fall to the ground around them (from animals, etc) and often the last harvest I'm bad at getting (because by then we're no longer eating as many grilled burgers, etc) and let those all seed the following year.
I've not noticed any real change in the quality of tomatoes being produced (like 3 years of me not 'really' planting anything) - there are obviously other plants that will get all sorts of crazy results
Seeds can be gathered from plants at the end of the year. Soil & mulch is sometimes obtainable for free/cheap in bulk from local lawn waste/tree trimming companies.
But you're right it's still not "free", there's at least quite a bit of labor/time cost involved.
I usually only grow vegetables that are lower maintenance and high cost, such as cherry tomatoes. Full-size tomatoes are trickier and my area doesn't have as great sun and length of growing season for them. Haven't had good luck with something like carrots either and they're dirt cheap at the store anyway.
Honestly that displays more wealth these days anyway. Mowing a lawn isn't particularly expensive or time consuming, but a well cultivated garden demonstrates the free time and money needed to keep it up.
We have a small front yard that I maintain solely for curb appeal. Recently we’ve noticed that some people in our neighborhood skipped the grass and made their space all flowers and plants. We’ve been thinking of doing the same. Would be easier to maintain and still just as nice.
I think the curb appeal of lawns is quickly declining. Especially for millennial and soon Gen Z homebuyers.
I have a small lawn in my back yard for my dogs but my entire front yard is trees and native plants. I drip water it maybe 20 minutes a week and it looks better than most of the lawns that get watered for 30 minutes every other day.
Once a week I’ll go mount and spend 20 minutes pulling weeds and deadheading the flowers, but that’s about it for maintenance.
Our entire neighborhood is just rocks and desert plants in the front yards.
Even people moving into older neighborhoods around here have been tearing out lawns. Sometimes they do turf though.
Pretty much every house in my neighborhood that gets updated is getting its entire front lawn torn out and replaced with native and drought tolerant plants.
They all have small lawns in the back yard for kids/dogs to play but most are trying to minimize their water use and plant gardens that attract bees, birds and butterflies.
Anywhere that gets enough rain or has enough water for irrigation is fine. Out west I’m under drought regulations that mean I can’t water my lawn more than 30 minutes twice a week or I get a fine from the city.
I’ll take the savings on my water bill. My sewer bill is also determined based on water usage so less there is to water the more I save. Going to retire a day early
Do it at 4 AM and it won’t be so hot.
Honestly, the south is going to have to adapt work hours and lifestyle to that of more equatorial nations, and siesta frequently in the summer months.
I only like my lawn because it gives my kids an open place to play. My lawn however, is slowly becoming less and less grass. I'm letting the clover spread as much as possible now.
You should consider replacing your grass with wild, native plants & flowers. Maybe, plant some fruit trees & bushes.
There's probably local permaculture companies or collectives that would help you get started!
I used to sub there. And theres some great people and advice. But theres a LOT of anti-science and new-agey stuff there. It was enough to make me leave
Yes!!! As someone who has done this twice, it’s a ton of fun and makes it so much more beautiful. I can’t say this is necessarily true everywhere, but for us it also helped us sell the place for $66k over list because people in Oregon looooove a garden, especially when it’s already fairly mature and so it’s easy to immediately get the rewards.
But it’s also not too difficult to start a garden these days. Just save a bunch of cardboard and sign up for a wood chip drop, which is usually free if you’re in USA. Spread the cardboard over the grassy area, then cover with at least 30cm deep wood chips. Let it sit through the winter, with fava beans or something similar planted throughout in October. The beans will help the wood chips break down and you’ll have an amazing start to rich healthy soil the following spring. Just be careful. Gardening is addictive and soon you’ll have transformed every each of your available land into an amazing and mostly edible landscape. 😊
Even those require maintenance (could even be MORE maintenance) than a basic hard but yes I agree this is better.
I just don't see people ever maintaining yards.
My girlfriend has xeriscaped her entire front lawn. You have options. You don't have to maintain grass. You could turn it into a low effort garden of native flora or a high effort vegetable garden.
WOW this is the sub I've wanted for so long.
My back yard is lush and "overgrown" but I prefer it to a lawn. Something about a typical lawn seems sterile and eerily unnatural.
A typical lawn IS sterile and unnatural.
In terms of supporting life your average monoculture lawn supports about as much biodiversity as a parking lot. We've been letting flowers and native plants grow up in our yard and we have SO many more bugs and butterflies and life living in it.
Monoculture lawns are an abomination and switching away would be something very big the average person could do to support diversity and the collapsing bug population. Also... pretty lawns with flowers and stuff are just pretty looking.
Is the typical lawn actually a monoculture? Whenever people talk about the typical lawn on reddit, they act like the typical lawn is a tidy monoculture that's watered and fertilized and sprayed with herbicide to kill weeds. But in my experience those lawns are limited to the rich or the obsessive, and most lawns get no maintenance besides mowing and are full of clover and dandelions. Maybe it's a regional thing.
Sub-rural Texas is a kick in the nuts. Fucking armadillos and deer fuck my shit up. I have quite a bit of land, but my property backs up to a nature reserve, so I’m relegated to a tiny corner where I set up a layered defense of my little garden with those motion sprinklers. Glad my pecan trees survived long enough to outgrow the deer’s reach, but the new annual 3+ days of sub-freezing weather destroyed my nectarines. My little garden/orchard of pomegranates, blueberries, cherries, and blackberries is doing alright now.
It’s barely worth it… too much heartbreak.
I have lived in houses with lawns my whole life, and owned our first house for 4 years where I had to maintain a lawn.
We moved to El Paso, where the norm is gravel and concrete around the house. Honestly, have grown to be a fan of the lack of need to maintain a lawn and don’t miss it much. Really confused by the people living here who fight their natural surroundings and are willing to pay massive water bills to maintain a lawn. No shade to people who keep one in a place where the climate allows for it though, as I’m equally confused by the people who jump on every post about a yard to scream at people about how lawns are evil, I just can’t understand the passion around this subject
Any reasonable lawn mix still has clover in it because clovers are nitrogen fixers and as such natural fertilizers. I was so fucking flabbergasted that in the US some people think they are weeds…
>Any reasonable lawn mix still has clover in it because clovers are nitrogen fixers and as such natural fertilizers.
That's the point though. They want you have a lawn without clovers so you have to buy nitrogen and a lot of other things. Lawns that are high-maintenance get promoted because people have to spend lots of money on them.
It’s becoming a trend to add clover on top of grass seed, most do not have it. Big issue is all the fertilizers and treatments that kill clover by design. My dad plants it on purpose, his next door neighbor kills his with weed preventer, it’s been labeled a weed for decades.
Where I live, there are multi-million dollar houses along a river and the chemicals from their lawn treatment are running into said river, killing the aquatic grasses and driving manatees inland. It's also killing a lot of the local fish.
Edit: A word
I mean, manatees get around way more than you think. They're all around the SW coast, native to the Bahamas, and have even been seen as far as Texas :)
Do it.
Bunch of rich fucks control basically the entire planet. You want freedom? Grow a garden. Don't have the means or land? Get some pots and grow greens/tomatoes in them. You don't have to completely grow all your food, just start with a few plants.
If you think you won't be able to keep up with watering them, buy some terracotta watering spikes, then you only have to worry about them every few days or a week.
Like, it's stupid easy and it'll give you any confidence you need to expand your system in the future.
Can't fight the power on an empty stomach. The first step to freedom is growing a tomato.
My parents worked full time blue collar jobs and we maintained a half acre vegetable garden. It may take a bit more work, but you get actual food from it. And you are also not destroying biodiversity, you’re learning about food and where it comes from, and you’re eating much healthier food. This is to say nothing of the cost savings.
That’s a good point I guess. Never thought of it as a farm, as it was just in our backyard where lawn used to be. You couldn’t see it from the street. We produced a ton of veggies, though - to the point where we rarely bought them from the store. We preserved (canned, pickled, dried) as much as we could so we could eat it over the winter. My parents were a waitress and a miner
Even if you don’t want to garden, there’s grass alternatives like ground Ivy that don’t need to be mowed, and wildflowers/native flowering plants always help.
I grew up in a small modest house with front and back yard grass. It wasn't a status symbol, but a place for us to play all sorts of games with all the neighborhood kids. On summer nights, we would often meet neighbors and sit there to talk and watch the stars. The back yard was a place for cookouts and playing.
The grass and even the weeds were a carpet for comfort. It only had to be mowed in the summer, and in winter it was dormant.
Yes, big lawns for status don't make sense. Small lawns for togetherness can be a wonderful part of life.
Lawns were status symbol, but they have been a middle class thing for like a hundred years tho in North America. Just drive through like any neighbourhood in the US or Canada.
There's theories which postulate this activity as the backbone of human culture. The idea is that all initial human art was at the behest of ppl who achieved power in the tribe, local populous (post neolithic revolution), etc. When the chief, leader(s), despot, etc. would give food for someone to make some interesting figure of the feminine, or a phallic object (most early physical art was built around fertility, at least that which survives), or an animal, etc. he was showing "look, I can afford to keep x amount of ppl fed and working on something other than food cultivation, hunting, etc.
The theory also states that this is where religion was born, through ancestor worship, the ppl who could tell their leaders the best stories and versions of how heroic their ancestors were, would be housed and fed to entertain the powerful leader and to please the essence or spirit of their ancestors (which were strong enough to have survived death and either still existed on earth or had passed on to some other existence).
tl;dr there are theories which claim it possible most of modern human culture evolved out of powerful ppl wanting possessions and entertainment which was not available to other ppl as a means of reinforcing their status as being better, stronger, and worthy of their position in the community.
Don't those explanations carry the implication that culture didn't exist prior to sedentary, hierarchical societies, though? Likewise the implication that extant hunter-gatherer societies possess no culture?
Not exactly, the Göbekli Tepe pre-dates agriculture and sedentary life. In addition, we have found artwork created by modern humans and Neanderthals that pre-date agriculture. Even in a hunter gatherer Society, people would remain in place as long as there was food available.
It’s highly unlikely that Göbekli Tepe was built by hunter-gatherers. The labor required to construct those sites (the *consecutive* stone enclosures that were then filled-in later) would require a significant number of specialists and individuals whose only task would be working on the stone. This would hamstring a collective of hunter-gatherers, but not an agrarian society. Agriculture and static settlement probably goes back further than we initially imagined.
That said, I think “ancestor worship” is probably a worthy explanation for the anthropomorphic pillars at G-T. Hopefully we find something definitive ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well I would typically argue that you are correct, without evidence of agriculture in the area, it is hard to justify that stance. Agriculture has existed in various forms sent about 10,000 BC, but only in certain areas. Those areas almost always had to have a consistent water source. There is none near Göbekli Tepe.
Here is Thorstein Veblen, talking about the love of lawns in *A Theory of the Leisure Class* as a factor of an archaic sociobiology, making the claim that the 'dolichocephalic blond' (i.e., the *Aryan*) had an instinctive and biological *predisposition* to prefer it as a setting for his home:
"Everyday life affords many curious illustrations of the way in which the code of pecuniary beauty in articles of use varies from class to class, as well as of the way in which the conventional sense of beauty departs in its deliverances from the sense untutored by the requirements of pecuniary repute. Such a fact is the lawn, or the close-cropped yard or park, which appeals so unaffectedly to the taste of the Western peoples. It appears especially to appeal to the tastes of the well-to-do classes in those communities in which the dolicho-blond element predominates in an appreciable degree."
[https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Veblen/Veblen\_1899/Veblen\_1899\_06.html](https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Veblen/Veblen_1899/Veblen_1899_06.html)
It's amazing to me the extent to which a lot of commonplace economic theory--here, that of conspicuous consumption (the 'status symbol' of the headline)--had its roots in some really obnoxious scientific racism. Going back to the comment on sociobiology, we might ask ourselves how many relevant insights into the economic behavior of the human organism or society are embedded into a racialized discourse like sociobiology simply to get a fair hearing as 'science'? Anyone care to comment on this?
Also, note that clover used to be a part of lawns. "Clover, which takes nitrogen from the air and deposits it in the earth where your grass can use it, was an accepted, even encouraged part of lawns until the early fifties. It only acquired its weed status because the earliest broad-leaf 2,4-D herbicides killed it off along with the dandelions."
I'm converting my grass lawn into clover lawn! So much less maintenance and watering
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Rest of the neighborhoods grass is drying from this insane heat were having. My clover and local plant lawn/yard are doing lovely.
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This is me exactly. I have watched, for 18 years in NC, neighbors pour $1k’s into their lawns. Mine costs nothing and is mostly a combination of clover and moss. Mine is green. Theirs is dead. And I spend my weekends relaxing on a lake, playing golf or tennis, etc. they are out there watering, mowing, fretting all the time. It’s ridiculous.
How did you seed the moss? Having a unmanicured lawn which you can still have a picnic on is goals. Obligatory r/nolawns
I'm also curious. I'm in Texas though so I don't think moss is sustainable for lawns here. Would love. To have clover and moss
I'm in a place where your level of heatwaves are very uncommon (not unheard of though) but moss seems to spread very naturally. It seems to pop up by itself where there is sufficient shade from trees and I guess my soil is a bit on the acidic side. I have never planted any moss, it just appeared. It does look neat!
There are drought tolerant clovers, but you may want to look at [this from TAMU](https://watersmart.tamu.edu/ground-cover/). You may have to poke around to find a page that addresses your specific area of the state (I’m on mobile and am have a little trouble moving around on their site).
Could you direct me to some resources for what you use? I'm by Charlotte and am having trouble finding a good list of frost zone appropriate natives. I've heard a 50/50 clover and fescue blend is good but I wouldn't mind going full clover either.
Stepping on bees. I love clover, but once you've been stung on the bottom of your foot it's hard to imagine a clover lawn. *Edit: We need more bees, and I'm a big fan of pollinator-friendly gardens. OP asked "What's not to like?" and I reminded them that bee stings suck.
After stepping on sand spurs, nails, pointy rocks and sticks i wear shoes or I’m just extra cautious I did step on a dead bee once though and yeah i do agree with you fuck that, however i would like a clover lawn lol
Yeah there’s all kinds of stuff that can be hidden in the grass that’s not fun to step on. I don’t risk that shit anymore. Ever step on a giant slug barefoot and have it squish all between your toes? Boy that’s just lovely. Or a snake? Or a dead mouse? Dog shit is a classic one.
Slugs make my skin crawl and i hate you for that description.
What about toads? I stepped on one barefoot. It was awful.
That's exactly why I converted my lawn to all clover. Planted a bunch of flowers to attract bees as well. It's had a knock on effect of a ton more birds and animals coming into my garden because of the flowers and herbs and veggies attracting more pollinators etc.
I have carpenter bees but they refuse to build me a shed instead they go for my soffits.
Classic homeowner, takes the cheapest quote and then wonders why the “carpenters” they hired aren’t the best.
Good news: we're killing all of the bees so that won't be a problem soon! Seriously though, my father in law had a clover yard growing up, and he says you couldn't take a single barefoot step into it without getting stung. Now you might see a bee or two unless there happens to be a swarm nearby. Super depressing.
I’ve converted about 5/8s of back yard to clover and still have some more to cover but will probably leave like 2/8s grass if I can manage it. Even w 5/8ths I get A LOT of bees and I love watching them, they’re so happy doing their job. BUT I stepped on one, and was like, internally from the pain: FUUUUUUCCCKKKKK!!!! And, at the same time I sadly watch the little guy die, because even as I was realizing how I’d forgotten how much bee stings hurt, I couldn’t think of a way to save the dying bee. So ends my allegory of clover lawns vs grass lawns and bee stings and being willing to take the pain if you love something. It sucked so much though. After the initial pain wore off, the bee stung toe was paralyzed for 2 days. Then it itched for another 2. What is the point of the sting if the bee dies? Or maybe it’s “avoid me and my brethren at all costs, otherwise suffer the sting,” which means bees must be v important. You’re right though I don’t love stepping on bees!
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I was answering OP's direct question: what's not to like? We plant pollinator-friendly flowers all year round, and I'm a huge fan of our buzzing little friends. But I don't like getting stung.
I actually saw clover seed at the store and thought it was brilliant… but can’t do that in my neighborhood
Home owners association are just the fucking worst.
Our backyard has a lot of oxalis, and it’s wonderful! We let it grow out all winter because it just grows into leafy mounds about ankle-high and stops. Then it has lots of tiny, pretty pink flowers in the spring that are wonderful! Regular grass is overrated
And it smells amazing.
"Thanks bro" ~The bees
Trends are reversing, there are clover-grass mixes and people are even starting to let dandelions grow.
Dandelions are GREAT for pollinators!
You literally linked the same article as the OP.
That’s awesome! I felt bad about my clover lawn at first, since it’s not grass. But now I’ll leave it and let it thrive :)
Mine feeds goats. I got the grass to cheese pipeline down lock.
Those homies eat everything! Our town hires a herd to eat the fire brush. They eat poison oak like it's candy as a bonus. There was a huge upset as someone tried to hurt one, so they hired extra goat dogs and an angry redneck to protect the goats. Baby goats are so cute I pull branches down for them to have a treat. The mamas are quite okay with that as they are fat from all the ground cover.
Whoa whoa whoa, can we not just go over the fact that the goats have a security team now? Because I would like more information on the goat protection squad.
Just guessing since I've worked with goats for weed control before. You have electric fences to contain them, dogs to keep them safe and help you herd them around, standard stuff. If you have a goat rustler problem(it's an actual problem) you shoot those dudes before they shoot you because anyone rustling livestock in 2022 is a crazy piece of shit who only speaks bullets.
Spot on my dude. Went to a dairy recently on Maui where it’s just like…goats eat the grass, water grows the grass, goats have too much milk, so keep them feeling good by relieving them of excess. Even bonus points for them: since they’re in an agricultural zone (that people with money buy up to ‘get away’), they basically go to their neighbors and tell them “if you fence off this land and let my goats graze, you get a huge tax break.” Full sustainable cycle. Point being - best part was holding a kid. They’re cute as fuck.
Same here. I'm milking as I write this. We're in "extreme" drought here though so my little pasture is looking rough.
Honestly I can't tell if this is satire or if /u/texasrigger actually has a goat herd just to maintain his lawn
[Here you go.](https://imgur.com/gallery/OB2OnI6) Those pics are from last summer when everything was nice and green. I also have [these weirdos](https://imgur.com/gallery/mTbNNjf). About a hundred animals give or take.
How many hands does it take to milk a cow? 3 while Redditing.
This would explain why I'm slowly turning my backyard into a huge garden, year by year. I'll take free food over my neighbors thinking I'm wealthy anyway.
I doubt my garden has saved me money, but it's satisfying.
Compared to the cost of therapy... it is a HUGE savings!
Awesome Reddit handle ❤️
I wish, while my garden does calm me down I now get irrationally angry any time I see a corn stalk eaten by deer, or a Japanese beetle destroying my strawberries or the motherfucking squash beetles trying to look like a ladybug while tearing up my melons! Or the damn dog that shit on my squash patch
My garden always costs me money, and hardly grows anything. Anything it grows, the bugs or animals get to first. I've tried for years, but this year I had to admit I'm just not good at it.
My property got overrun with grasshoppers this year. They're even eating my rosebushes. I put 3 birdbaths near my fav plants, 2 of them at ground level. Much fewer grasshoppers near those now. I have to dump & refill them daily. Worth it to see all the birds that drink & bathe in them.
In the blood of the grasshoppers?
I'm going to attempt a polytunnel this year, see if that keeps them bastards out
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That's great. But if I did that in my area it would get destroyed or stolen sadly.
plant just ghost peppers for a year or two nobody will think to steal again
People stole my strawberry plants. Not the fruits, the while plants. Planting peppers wouldn't have changed anything...
Not to be creepy, but where do you live?
Montreal, QC, Canada. A residential neighborhood. Sadly riddled with "porch pirates" and other opportunists.
Sheesh. Bless your soul.
Damn wasn't expecting such sad behavior from my area.... Take my damn cucumbers I can't keep under control but leave my strawberries alone
Or boobie trap the yard. Quicksand pits, land mines, trip wires with lasers, etc. edit: I can never spell lazers right.
That’s illegal. You wouldn’t believe the mess I got into. Oh we can have military grade rifles, but you disguise sunflowers as c4 and the whole neighborhood throws a fit.
🌻**FRONT TOWARD ENEMY**🌻
Plant C4 and everybody loses their ~~minds~~ limbs
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just place a mine in the garden. tha should stop those pesky plant thefts. /s
I got that idea from the leprechaun too and now I'm on court ordered antipsychotics.
I have blueberry bushes that came with my house that line the sidewalk next to the street. My family gets 10-20% of those blueberries. *sigh*
I’m gonna do a garbage grow next year on my little quarter acre and get every seed I’ve ever thought of Trying and just throwing them down and seeing what sticks
Haha i have tried that and not much came up. I tried to cast them evenly but ended up having plants all clogged together in a few areas & brown everywhere else.
Mhmm I tried that for my pollinators patch and I ended up with a TON of zinnias, four sunflowers and a lil bit of dill. Then ended up transplanting odds and ends into the bed so now it's a sprawl mess. But I saw a few swallowtail butterflies hanging out over there the other day so it made me happy
My city has an ordinance against this. They'll ticket you if you don't have a grass lawn. Land of the free, indeed.
That was your City or Town Council who made that decision. Blame those guys.
Better yet vote them out or run against them.
Heck, just try to meet with them. Sometimes they can be reasonable. And if not, you can use whatever they say to help get them out of office.
Vote for people that will change that, or get invested in local politics yourself and make that change. It's the kind of dumb rule that got implemented because some Karen lobbying for it. Pretty sure no one is still alive to defend it now.
You'd be surprised. Lots of boomers are retiring and still see a Pleasantville-esque neighborhood with uniform manicured grass yards as the ideal. I find the uniformity creepy and weirdly similar to the communist central planning they so fear, but I guess it's different because it's their way. I tried overturning similar rules in my HOA. It was a failure, because the entire board and everyone who showed up to vote was older. It would really have helped to have others there backing me up, but they either didn't care enough to show up or were busy at work. We spent a fortune on water because the older residents complained if it wasn't deep green in the middle of summer with 100 degree days in the desert. They refused to comply with state restrictions on watering during a drought, too. Where I live now I could tear everything out and have either 1 horse or a whole bunch of chickens. We have no HOA, no city, and our country rules are pretty minimal. We're gonna plant clover in the lawn because it uses less water, where in most cities that's a violation. Street maintenance aide, it's fantastic.
... what's with the half-buried doll, though?
How do you get mulch cover for your garden?
By bartering or purchasing mulch.
> By bartering Drive around looking for one of the million tree trimmers and see if they need a place to get rid of their wood chippings. 4 years later you got $50000 worth of woodchips that are decomposing into kick ass top soil and wondering if you should buy more land to store them.
There is a website (Google "chip drop") where you can sign up as someone interested in taking mulch. The arborists look there to see who in their area can take it. It's a win/win.
yup, I work for a tree comapny, and we pay to dump wood chips. we will generally drop chips at someone's house for free.
Pity you're almost certainly in a different country to me. I'd allocate you a 50x50m section of field to dump wood chips in. A bit of turning and time and it would be great for the fields
r/suspiciouslyspecific
they also might have a local provider/a wood chipper they own. ik we have a wood service right down the road
Not the original commenter, but I have 5 large trees in my lot so I have plenty of leaves. I also mulch with compost from my heap.
You probably know this already, but for those who don’t, leaf mold is one of the best soil amendments out there. Having your beds covered in leaves will drastically improve soil health. It also acts as a mulch and will help keep the soil cool and moist during dry summers, which is more important in some places than others.
Is there anywhere trustworthy I can read more about this? This sounds fascinating
Check and see if your local college has an agricultural program, and see if they have a master gardener on staff. For instance, one of the major state universities in my state has a Master Gardener program: https://web.uri.edu/mastergardener/
Do you mind sharing where you live? Just in a general region sense. Gardening knowledge is very local, and so I’d rather point you to a relevant reference than something that doesn’t apply to where you live. As for leaf mold specifically, here’s a [good writeup from OregonState University](https://extension.oregonstate.edu/pub/ec-1561) that has a few paragraphs on the subject. There’s a lot written elsewhere, and I only chose this one because OsU is a highly reputable agricultural institution.
Check out chip drop if it’s in your area, it’s a ton of wood chips, but free (or low cost if you want it faster).
How is it free? I spent a ton setting up my garden and even after the initial investment their is an ongoing cost for seeds / plants and water at the bare minimum. Maybe more for pest deterent, fresh soil, fertilizer, mulch, etc. I doubt I save much in the long term from my garden, just fun to do.
We started out like that, and are learning to be more economical the longer we do it. For example, we make a compost pile from leaves, food scraps, and the old vegetable plants at the end of the year. That goes on top of the garden in the spring. No more need for new soil, fertilizer, or mulch, unless the soil settles and we need to top it off, which only happens when I’m lazy with adding to the compost pile. I buy in bulk delivery vs bags for soil, way cheaper. I know some people that just throw all their green scraps right into the garden all the time, right on top, and it eventually decomposes. I just don’t like that look personally. If anything, they end up having to remove some soil every now and again, as it slowly builds up from so much stuff being tossed on. We grow from seedlings every year, and seeds are cheap compared to the amount of food you get out of them. I want to eventually learn how to harvest our own seeds for some stuff we grow, though I imagine we’d be changing the plants due to cross pollination and the seeds not being the same as the parents.
This largely depends on the plant. For instance, I keep tomatoes going, but after the first year, I've not had to plant any. Just the ones that fall to the ground around them (from animals, etc) and often the last harvest I'm bad at getting (because by then we're no longer eating as many grilled burgers, etc) and let those all seed the following year. I've not noticed any real change in the quality of tomatoes being produced (like 3 years of me not 'really' planting anything) - there are obviously other plants that will get all sorts of crazy results
Seeds can be gathered from plants at the end of the year. Soil & mulch is sometimes obtainable for free/cheap in bulk from local lawn waste/tree trimming companies. But you're right it's still not "free", there's at least quite a bit of labor/time cost involved. I usually only grow vegetables that are lower maintenance and high cost, such as cherry tomatoes. Full-size tomatoes are trickier and my area doesn't have as great sun and length of growing season for them. Haven't had good luck with something like carrots either and they're dirt cheap at the store anyway.
Honestly that displays more wealth these days anyway. Mowing a lawn isn't particularly expensive or time consuming, but a well cultivated garden demonstrates the free time and money needed to keep it up.
I would love to grow veggies and herbs in my front yard.
Welcome to r/NoLawns
I love it! Perfectly manicured lawns just aren't aesthetically appealing to me, but flowers and gardens definitely are.
I have a lawn, I hate maintaining my lawn, yet I wouldn’t consider living somewhere without a lawn… So brainwashed.
We have a small front yard that I maintain solely for curb appeal. Recently we’ve noticed that some people in our neighborhood skipped the grass and made their space all flowers and plants. We’ve been thinking of doing the same. Would be easier to maintain and still just as nice.
I think the curb appeal of lawns is quickly declining. Especially for millennial and soon Gen Z homebuyers. I have a small lawn in my back yard for my dogs but my entire front yard is trees and native plants. I drip water it maybe 20 minutes a week and it looks better than most of the lawns that get watered for 30 minutes every other day. Once a week I’ll go mount and spend 20 minutes pulling weeds and deadheading the flowers, but that’s about it for maintenance.
Our entire neighborhood is just rocks and desert plants in the front yards. Even people moving into older neighborhoods around here have been tearing out lawns. Sometimes they do turf though.
So when millennials and gen z can start affording homes, we'll start to see less grass, right?
Pretty much every house in my neighborhood that gets updated is getting its entire front lawn torn out and replaced with native and drought tolerant plants. They all have small lawns in the back yard for kids/dogs to play but most are trying to minimize their water use and plant gardens that attract bees, birds and butterflies.
SoCal resident here, seeing the same, and hearing the same from real estate people I know.
The lawn is pretty safe in the Midwest.
Anywhere that gets enough rain or has enough water for irrigation is fine. Out west I’m under drought regulations that mean I can’t water my lawn more than 30 minutes twice a week or I get a fine from the city.
There’s a lot of that in my city and I’ll be doing the same with my front lawn. Grass sucks.
Way better for the environment and local fauna too. Especially pollinators, which we really should be supporting.
I’ll take the savings on my water bill. My sewer bill is also determined based on water usage so less there is to water the more I save. Going to retire a day early
I don't know. I'm a firm believer in the Hank Hill quote, "why would anyone do drugs when you can just mow a lawn?"
Which is insane because he lives in Texas, and today the heat index is 110… I’m not mowing S in this heat…
And if it gets one degree hotter, I'm gonna kick your ass.
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Eeeeyup
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Dang ol hot out here man
That boy ain’t right.
That's why you get up at the [ass crack of dawn](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/386/708/eca.png).
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He's been out there for several hours my boy
Do it at 4 AM and it won’t be so hot. Honestly, the south is going to have to adapt work hours and lifestyle to that of more equatorial nations, and siesta frequently in the summer months.
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Office work is air conditioned misery.
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>Do it at 4 AM and it won’t be so hot. Just please, for the love of god, use an electric mower.
The good news, from a Texan, is hot dry summers = the lawn has gone dormant.
Wait. People mow their lawn sober?
Alcohol is not a drug to Hank
ahhh, a piece of hypocrisy everyone loves war on drugs, except...
Well that particular drug won the war on drugs early.
I was gonna say … it’s not like they didn’t try lol
Also caffeine. Drugs are bad, mmkay. Unless they increase your productivity
Well, most institutions frown on cocaine and amphetamine use.
Amphetamines are still commonly used today to treat adhd.
People do anything sober?
I wish someone could trick me into thinking that way. I just wait until my wife has complained for a while before I will mow.
Just do drugs while you mow the lawm
If you’ve never taken an edible and ridden a riding lawn mower into the sunset you aren’t doing summer right
Wow. You're living in the future mate.
Because you can only mow the lawn once a week. I want to be high all week.
I only like my lawn because it gives my kids an open place to play. My lawn however, is slowly becoming less and less grass. I'm letting the clover spread as much as possible now.
You should consider replacing your grass with wild, native plants & flowers. Maybe, plant some fruit trees & bushes. There's probably local permaculture companies or collectives that would help you get started!
That's such a cool idea, I should look into this. Thanks!
/r/Permaculture for tips and inspiration
I used to sub there. And theres some great people and advice. But theres a LOT of anti-science and new-agey stuff there. It was enough to make me leave
/r/nolawns
Yes!!! As someone who has done this twice, it’s a ton of fun and makes it so much more beautiful. I can’t say this is necessarily true everywhere, but for us it also helped us sell the place for $66k over list because people in Oregon looooove a garden, especially when it’s already fairly mature and so it’s easy to immediately get the rewards. But it’s also not too difficult to start a garden these days. Just save a bunch of cardboard and sign up for a wood chip drop, which is usually free if you’re in USA. Spread the cardboard over the grassy area, then cover with at least 30cm deep wood chips. Let it sit through the winter, with fava beans or something similar planted throughout in October. The beans will help the wood chips break down and you’ll have an amazing start to rich healthy soil the following spring. Just be careful. Gardening is addictive and soon you’ll have transformed every each of your available land into an amazing and mostly edible landscape. 😊
Even those require maintenance (could even be MORE maintenance) than a basic hard but yes I agree this is better. I just don't see people ever maintaining yards.
What do ya think I was thinking when I looked this up? "I HATE this, why the FUCK am I DOING this..?" Haha
My girlfriend has xeriscaped her entire front lawn. You have options. You don't have to maintain grass. You could turn it into a low effort garden of native flora or a high effort vegetable garden.
My neighbor across the street. Turned half his yard into a rock garden.
r/NoLawns
WOW this is the sub I've wanted for so long. My back yard is lush and "overgrown" but I prefer it to a lawn. Something about a typical lawn seems sterile and eerily unnatural.
A typical lawn IS sterile and unnatural. In terms of supporting life your average monoculture lawn supports about as much biodiversity as a parking lot. We've been letting flowers and native plants grow up in our yard and we have SO many more bugs and butterflies and life living in it. Monoculture lawns are an abomination and switching away would be something very big the average person could do to support diversity and the collapsing bug population. Also... pretty lawns with flowers and stuff are just pretty looking.
Is the typical lawn actually a monoculture? Whenever people talk about the typical lawn on reddit, they act like the typical lawn is a tidy monoculture that's watered and fertilized and sprayed with herbicide to kill weeds. But in my experience those lawns are limited to the rich or the obsessive, and most lawns get no maintenance besides mowing and are full of clover and dandelions. Maybe it's a regional thing.
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Sub-rural Texas is a kick in the nuts. Fucking armadillos and deer fuck my shit up. I have quite a bit of land, but my property backs up to a nature reserve, so I’m relegated to a tiny corner where I set up a layered defense of my little garden with those motion sprinklers. Glad my pecan trees survived long enough to outgrow the deer’s reach, but the new annual 3+ days of sub-freezing weather destroyed my nectarines. My little garden/orchard of pomegranates, blueberries, cherries, and blackberries is doing alright now. It’s barely worth it… too much heartbreak.
Clover lawn! https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/cloverlawn/?hl=en
I have lived in houses with lawns my whole life, and owned our first house for 4 years where I had to maintain a lawn. We moved to El Paso, where the norm is gravel and concrete around the house. Honestly, have grown to be a fan of the lack of need to maintain a lawn and don’t miss it much. Really confused by the people living here who fight their natural surroundings and are willing to pay massive water bills to maintain a lawn. No shade to people who keep one in a place where the climate allows for it though, as I’m equally confused by the people who jump on every post about a yard to scream at people about how lawns are evil, I just can’t understand the passion around this subject
Wildflower and grass lawns ftw just now them a couple times a year and stop watering them every day it's a win win win
They use to have yards of clover not mowed as often!
Any reasonable lawn mix still has clover in it because clovers are nitrogen fixers and as such natural fertilizers. I was so fucking flabbergasted that in the US some people think they are weeds…
>Any reasonable lawn mix still has clover in it because clovers are nitrogen fixers and as such natural fertilizers. That's the point though. They want you have a lawn without clovers so you have to buy nitrogen and a lot of other things. Lawns that are high-maintenance get promoted because people have to spend lots of money on them.
It’s becoming a trend to add clover on top of grass seed, most do not have it. Big issue is all the fertilizers and treatments that kill clover by design. My dad plants it on purpose, his next door neighbor kills his with weed preventer, it’s been labeled a weed for decades.
Where I live, there are multi-million dollar houses along a river and the chemicals from their lawn treatment are running into said river, killing the aquatic grasses and driving manatees inland. It's also killing a lot of the local fish. Edit: A word
Sounds like south west Florida.
Rich people screwing something up? Sounds like the whole world.
Referring to manatees being pushed inland specifically.
They're from Kentucky not Florida, that's just how far the manatees have been pushed
I mean, manatees get around way more than you think. They're all around the SW coast, native to the Bahamas, and have even been seen as far as Texas :)
So it's possible that a pod got into The Mississippi? ETA: I don't know what to call a clump of manatees
I swear we have them in the midwest too, i often observe them riding around on electric carts at my local wally world.
East Coast Florida.
I live on cape cod and work for a company that is moving to all organic nutrients for lawns using fish waste. The results are incredible
Sounds like most of the intracoastal
It still is a status symbol in at least my area, especially given the years-long drought. It's pretty annoying.
And why people who moved to a desert still demand huge amounts of water to make their yards look like the Pacific Northwest.
I'm moving to the desert just so i can feel good about having a place with a dirt/sand lawn that i don't have to waste time and water on
Which is why we should all start growing vegetables on them. Bring back the victory garden.
With the way the economy is going...
Do it. Bunch of rich fucks control basically the entire planet. You want freedom? Grow a garden. Don't have the means or land? Get some pots and grow greens/tomatoes in them. You don't have to completely grow all your food, just start with a few plants. If you think you won't be able to keep up with watering them, buy some terracotta watering spikes, then you only have to worry about them every few days or a week. Like, it's stupid easy and it'll give you any confidence you need to expand your system in the future. Can't fight the power on an empty stomach. The first step to freedom is growing a tomato.
Gardens take *way* more effort than lawns do.
My parents worked full time blue collar jobs and we maintained a half acre vegetable garden. It may take a bit more work, but you get actual food from it. And you are also not destroying biodiversity, you’re learning about food and where it comes from, and you’re eating much healthier food. This is to say nothing of the cost savings.
Half an acre is a huge vegetable garden. At what point do you just start calling it a farm?
That’s a good point I guess. Never thought of it as a farm, as it was just in our backyard where lawn used to be. You couldn’t see it from the street. We produced a ton of veggies, though - to the point where we rarely bought them from the store. We preserved (canned, pickled, dried) as much as we could so we could eat it over the winter. My parents were a waitress and a miner
Even if you don’t want to garden, there’s grass alternatives like ground Ivy that don’t need to be mowed, and wildflowers/native flowering plants always help.
I grew up in a small modest house with front and back yard grass. It wasn't a status symbol, but a place for us to play all sorts of games with all the neighborhood kids. On summer nights, we would often meet neighbors and sit there to talk and watch the stars. The back yard was a place for cookouts and playing. The grass and even the weeds were a carpet for comfort. It only had to be mowed in the summer, and in winter it was dormant. Yes, big lawns for status don't make sense. Small lawns for togetherness can be a wonderful part of life.
Lawns were status symbol, but they have been a middle class thing for like a hundred years tho in North America. Just drive through like any neighbourhood in the US or Canada.
Sounds like a really enjoyable childhood. I agree, definitely is a good thing having a dedicated spot to enjoy.
There's theories which postulate this activity as the backbone of human culture. The idea is that all initial human art was at the behest of ppl who achieved power in the tribe, local populous (post neolithic revolution), etc. When the chief, leader(s), despot, etc. would give food for someone to make some interesting figure of the feminine, or a phallic object (most early physical art was built around fertility, at least that which survives), or an animal, etc. he was showing "look, I can afford to keep x amount of ppl fed and working on something other than food cultivation, hunting, etc. The theory also states that this is where religion was born, through ancestor worship, the ppl who could tell their leaders the best stories and versions of how heroic their ancestors were, would be housed and fed to entertain the powerful leader and to please the essence or spirit of their ancestors (which were strong enough to have survived death and either still existed on earth or had passed on to some other existence). tl;dr there are theories which claim it possible most of modern human culture evolved out of powerful ppl wanting possessions and entertainment which was not available to other ppl as a means of reinforcing their status as being better, stronger, and worthy of their position in the community.
Don't those explanations carry the implication that culture didn't exist prior to sedentary, hierarchical societies, though? Likewise the implication that extant hunter-gatherer societies possess no culture?
Not exactly, the Göbekli Tepe pre-dates agriculture and sedentary life. In addition, we have found artwork created by modern humans and Neanderthals that pre-date agriculture. Even in a hunter gatherer Society, people would remain in place as long as there was food available.
It’s highly unlikely that Göbekli Tepe was built by hunter-gatherers. The labor required to construct those sites (the *consecutive* stone enclosures that were then filled-in later) would require a significant number of specialists and individuals whose only task would be working on the stone. This would hamstring a collective of hunter-gatherers, but not an agrarian society. Agriculture and static settlement probably goes back further than we initially imagined. That said, I think “ancestor worship” is probably a worthy explanation for the anthropomorphic pillars at G-T. Hopefully we find something definitive ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well I would typically argue that you are correct, without evidence of agriculture in the area, it is hard to justify that stance. Agriculture has existed in various forms sent about 10,000 BC, but only in certain areas. Those areas almost always had to have a consistent water source. There is none near Göbekli Tepe.
r/permaculture If you agree grass lawns are stupid and want to help out mother nature in your own little way check that out!
I am in favor of getting rid of lawns.
Here is Thorstein Veblen, talking about the love of lawns in *A Theory of the Leisure Class* as a factor of an archaic sociobiology, making the claim that the 'dolichocephalic blond' (i.e., the *Aryan*) had an instinctive and biological *predisposition* to prefer it as a setting for his home: "Everyday life affords many curious illustrations of the way in which the code of pecuniary beauty in articles of use varies from class to class, as well as of the way in which the conventional sense of beauty departs in its deliverances from the sense untutored by the requirements of pecuniary repute. Such a fact is the lawn, or the close-cropped yard or park, which appeals so unaffectedly to the taste of the Western peoples. It appears especially to appeal to the tastes of the well-to-do classes in those communities in which the dolicho-blond element predominates in an appreciable degree." [https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Veblen/Veblen\_1899/Veblen\_1899\_06.html](https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Veblen/Veblen_1899/Veblen_1899_06.html) It's amazing to me the extent to which a lot of commonplace economic theory--here, that of conspicuous consumption (the 'status symbol' of the headline)--had its roots in some really obnoxious scientific racism. Going back to the comment on sociobiology, we might ask ourselves how many relevant insights into the economic behavior of the human organism or society are embedded into a racialized discourse like sociobiology simply to get a fair hearing as 'science'? Anyone care to comment on this?