Nothing like turning your property into an overgrown mess, lowering the property value (and those of your neighbors), to deal with your climate anxiety, eh? No worries about the cops or HOA stopping by enforce the rules
Got The Climate Change Blues? Try Delawning
I wasn’t surprised to see terms like “Climate Anxiety†and “Climate Despair†printed in the New York Times recently.
Just about every conversation with my peers and coworkers in the last five years has veered off into that territory, with millennials doing what we do best—snarking our way through the coming existential catastrophe. Maybe a desperate attempt to avoid the outcomes forecasted by those terms.
But making apocalyptic jokes about a crisis too big, too impersonal to wrap one’s head around is a matter of triage more than it is of care. It acknowledges the severity of the problem while still keeping it at a distance because of its perceived hopelessness. I knew that distance wasn’t doing me any favors.
In trying to remove that distance, my wife Eliza and I removed our lawn.
In doing that, we invited a little ecosystem into our lives, and made a small contribution to the resilience of our microclimate.
The front yard looks like the back. You know, an overgrown mess
The lawn is a curious thing. It’s a symbol of uniformity within a neighborhood; a space that is maintained for theoretical or occasional use; covered with an imported plant with shallow roots; tended with machines often powered by fossil fuels; fertilized and poisoned in alteration to give the appearance of vibrancy, but not too much. A way of having nature close at hand without having to get your hands very dirty.
But in smothering or removing grass, in growing food or allowing native perennial plants into even a small portion of a formerly manicured space, and in ceasing the application of pesticides, you get the opportunity to observe a complete ecosystem from the microbial level on up.
Or, you could get out in the woods and fields, get out in nature, rather than turning your yard into a mess.
By getting rid of your lawn, and replacing it with any number of trees, shrubs, native perennials, or food producing plants, you get that experience in full.
Does that look like a nice yard? Or an overgrown yard of a house being condemned? Meh, Warmists are nuts
And then imagine if one of your immediate neighbors did that? Then 10 of them? Then 30? Then, that every neighborhood you passed through during your day was host to its own bridges of green, its own vibrant ecosystem?
It starts with the space we have.
These are lazy idiots thinking up a rationale to justify their laziness.
We live out in the woods and it’s a constant battle AGAINST nature to keep our forest healthy and (relatively) fire resistant. If I adopted that writer’s mentality, I’d have a lot more time on my hands, and the next fire would wipe us out, guaranteed.
I wrote about my ongoing battle with Mother Nature about a week ago on my blog: Confession: I Beat My Mother
Teach advocates that fascist cops and HOAs force property owners to comply with government edicts regarding their plantings??
Got it. Masks to keep children from dying is fascism but lawn police to protect other people’s property value is a benign use of state power.
Jeff,
Exactly how many children have died and how does a mask help.
Doogie Hoser,
At least 335 children under 17 have died of Covid. Approx 1.5 million have lost a parent, guardian or caregiver.
Masks reduce the spread of the virus two ways – by reducing expressed virus by one infected, and by reducing the likelihood that the uninfected will become infected.
In the summer of 1944 Americans were asked to risk their lives storming Normandy. You’re drawing the line at being asked to wear a mask. FREEDOM!
Oh, the horror. People have died. A handful of children expired, probably you had some of them. Your mechanics of mask function leave much to be desired and the lit actually says the opposite.
As to 1944, what does that have to do with anything? As to being asked, that shows how stupid you are. The young men were ordered to storm a beach that was not prepped by a single bomb. The whole thing was a shambles, like most government run things.
So you’re saying the storming of Normandy showed what saps the soldiers were. How patriotic you are. Thank goodness those brave Americans defeated the Nazis. Now our so-called patriots are trying to overturn the US gov’t that you despise.
Masks reduce the transmission of the virus, as do lockdowns, social distancing and working from home.
Jeff,
Wrong on all counts.
Doogie Hoser, Dr of Chiropractic,
You’re theories of America are about as sound as your theory that spinal manipulation can cure schizophrenia.
Did a stretch in MN with a neighbor who was a ‘weed rancher’ greenie. She whined incessantly about the herbicides I had to use on my scraggly lawn.Our little community did not have an HOA and the city did not have any ordinances about waist high lawns. Everyone else kept the grass mowed for the three or so months it actually grew. Now, living in a more civilized area, we’ve got the first HOA we have ever dealt with in 50+ years. A pita, etc., but we are more comfortable without the overt greenie doing her best to offend everyone else.
By the way, lawns are an ecosystem as much as the ‘weed ranch’. I’ve never been a lawn maven, but I’ve gotten into it and done right, a decent lawn requires attention.
Teach whines that individual “warmists” aren’t doing anything for the environment, then Teach whines when they do. Teach whines.
“Warmists do little,”
whines hypocritical Teach,
now, “They do too much!”
Come on Elwood, we all know lefties are lazy. That’s why they all move to big cities and live in high rises. Then comes someone like you who lives in the suburbs, owns weapons and drives gas guzzlers and pretends he actually cares about crime or the environment or other people.
Warmists don’t do anything including turning down the thermostat, buy an electric car or mow their lawn. If they have a lawn they pay an illegal to do it for them and then rip them off and tell them to SUE ME, so they can give their uncle Lawyer a reason to stop reading DAS BOOT and start using DAS BOOT.
I took a 60×60 section of backyard lawn this spring and made 6 raised beds, looks like a jungle, 10 yards topsoil, 7 yards manure everything encased in a 5 strand electric fence. Planted pumpkins out front to accent the dwarf alberta spruce, makes sense to me –
Teach do you yourself take care of a lawn
Or is it done by undocumented workers ?
“EDGARTOWN, MA—Is this guy great, or what? According to sources in Martha’s Vineyard, former President Obama is throwing a huge birthday bash with 700 guests at a seaside mansion that will likely be underwater due to climate change any minute now—all as a way to show the American people what not to do during a pandemic in a country affected by climate change.
“As he always has, Barack Obama is showing the way by doing the exact opposite,” said NBC anchor and global megastar Chuck Todd. “Once again, the chosen one has seen fit to bathe us in the warmth of his glory and light. We look to our great Hope as the purest, most muscular, most cool example of all the things one should never do during a pandemic on a coastal town affected by sea-level rise. Thank you, sir, from all of us—the American people.”
Chuck Todd then jumped out the window to his death, having just found out he wasn’t invited to Obama’s birthday party.
Insiders report that hundreds of high-profile elite guests—such as George Clooney, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jeffrey Epstein will be in attendance to get an intensive course on everything they should NOT be doing, after which they will go spread the word of proper pandemic behavior to the regular people.
The Coast Guard will be on watch all evening for deadly sea level rise and will simply keep out the advancing ocean by stacking up the bodies of COVID victims to form a seawall.
Thanks, Obama! ”
Thanks Babylon Bee!!!