%&$#! Tru-Green
I took the kids for a walk to get groceries. Usually I let them play in the grass outside an apartment complex on the way; there is a great hill they can run up and down and F is figuring out how to roll down it.
Today there were signs up that pesticides had been spread on it and it wasn’t safe for big people, small people and pets.
So, what is the point of grass you can’t walk on? Can’t play on? Because, really, it isn’t as attractive as a flower bed and isn’t as low maintenance as shrubbery. Furthermore, our front lawn looks just as nice other than lacking that nice little hill and we haven’t done diddly to it. No fertilizer. No herbicide. No pesticide. We’ve barely even bothered to water the thing. I think we let the kids run through the sprinkler once - once! - to keep them happy while I put in some plantings.
I really hate the mindset that a lawn - and this grass was, I couldn’t help but notice, laden with some plants that wouldn’t be considered part of the perfect lawn - is so important it is worth dumping chemicals that aren’t safe for man or beast in places that both men and beasts tend to go.
My kids wanted to play on that lawn that was on our walk. F fell over onto it. Ran up the steps and lay down on it before I could stop her. Oh, and the little toxic white pellets were on the public sidewalk too. So now they are on the bottom of our shoes. Which means on my floor. Where my children play. Nice.
Stumble it!
Donate to the Zoë and Lennox Simpson Memorial Fund
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August 1st, 2008 23:15
Ah, I thought I was the only one who felt that way! I wash my daughter’s shoes (thankfully they’re like crocs, so they easily come clean) after we walk on someone’s sidewalk that was covered in those stupid little chemical pellets. And I’ve already started instilling in her that we only walk on OUR grass, not someone else’s - only for that reason. Annoying annoying annoying!
August 1st, 2008 23:32
Probably fertilizer. That sucks!
August 2nd, 2008 04:11
Me too! It drives me crazy to see a whole lot of time, effort and money being sunk into something that people only look at when going to and from the car. Fertilizer on the sidewalk just ends up in the storm drain, both wasteful and damaging.
Oops! Didn’t mean for this to be a rant…
August 2nd, 2008 09:49
I agree. I’ve heard people making critical remarks about people who don’t keep up their lawns, but….isn’t that OUTDOORS? And isn’t it just….GRASS? We do nothing to our grass except cut it, and once we put out some new grass seed for a bare patch but that didn’t even work. Putting poisons to kill “the wrong kind” of grass or to kill bugs….well.
August 2nd, 2008 23:04
it is humans’ obsession to control the way things look & behave. especially grass. some of these newer subdivisions have such strict rules about the way the lawns look. and they MUST all look uniform: edged, weeded, manicured, NEVER overgrown. sounds like a grass cult. because if you don’t adhere to the “grass code,” you get a warning, then a fine. thankfully, we live in the old part of town, but my poor mother-in-law has to deal w/this rhetoric in her newer neighborhood. grass is most beautiful when it’s longer & wild anyway!
August 3rd, 2008 09:41
We have a saying here at our house (which comes from my Dad, who lives on a a farm and has an acre of lawn to mow): everything is green when it’s mowed.
Amazing that if you take the time to keep the lawn trimmed, even the weeds and quack grass look nice. And grass cycling (not bagging the clippings and letting them mulch back into the lawn) really helps keep it green. We haven’t watered all year and our yard looks pretty good.
August 3rd, 2008 10:14
Around here, we just call it “poison,” as in “Oh, those neighbors poison their lawn” or “I’m so glad the city budget is too strapped to poison the grass at the park.” I hate it.
August 4th, 2008 11:55
I so agree. It’s vile, this obsession with adding chemicals to lawns, and so pointless. My neighbor expends so much energy (his own, electrical, and gasoline) keeping his grass pristine. I am sure he uses different fertilizers.
My yard and garden, on the other hand, is alive with toads, newts, cicadas, birds and the occasional garter snake. I would never put poisons out there!
August 4th, 2008 22:52
I totally relate…my next door neighbor just had Chem-L@wn come (again) today. I can’t wait to be out of this house and not downhill from his, anymore. Other Neighbor, who organizes the “leaf vacuuming” curb service every fall, looks on with disgust, as we not only don’t rake our leaves, but mulch them up with our lawn mower. Next up for us, xeriscaping and an electric rechargeable mower…although the girls might miss the bunnies (”Hop!”) munching on weeds, I mean our lawn, here.