Okay - I take care of my lawn, and my home. My lawn is green, it survives most droughts. I do water it, feed it, etc. I do it responsibly. I avoid chemicals, I don’t water the day after it rains.
I am tired of watching sprinklers run in the rain.
I am tired of walking by the big aisles of the local home improvement center and seeing every herbicide, fungicide, insectiside and chemical nitrogen fertilizer selling well.
Every ignorant slob is out there pumping one meaningless chemical after the other into their lawns.
Lawns do not need this much care and waste. More harm is done to the lawn than good.
I am far from an enviromentalist, but watering during drought restrictions is a bit much. Pouring these chemicals all over the ground and spilling them all over is a disgrace. My son is not allowed to play on anyone’s lawn because I know some of the stuff on them could kill him or cause nervous or mental problems.
He plays on the concrete for safety.
What pisses me off is that half the lawns still look like shit, and I know lawns don’t need this crap…they might need real crap, but not the chemicals (some closely related to agent orange).
Dumb asses.
Go ahead, water your lawn after we just recieved 4 inches of rain over the past three days.
Yeah, we have a neighbor that uses all that crap. What happened was, he killed the soil in 3-5 year cycles. He’d have a beautiful lawn, pump it full of chemicals, kill the soil, rip up the remaining sod and a few inches of topsoil, put down new topsoil and sod, and continue the cycle. This idiot’s replaced his entire front lawn at least 5 or 6 times since I lived here, and he still hasn’t got the clue. He keeps telling us that he wished there wasn’t so much acid rain, or that the area had better topsoil. Moron!
I can’t get that mad, though. I just think of all the money he’s spent, and watch his car get older and rustier because he can’t afford to buy a new one. All for grass.
There was a bit on NPR yesterday about pesticides being used for lawn maintainence being linked to dead birds. They are doing post-mortum tests on dead birds in NY looking for signs of West Nile virus, but they’re discovering that many of the birds died from pesticides. The scientist interviewed said “When NYers realize that by treating thier lawns with pesticides they’re killing wildlife, maybe the’ll decide that a nice lawn isn’t all that important”.
I agree. I mow about 3 1/2 acres of lawn, and have never used a drop of weed killer or anything else. Is my lawn perfect? Nope-far from it. But you can walk through it in your bare feet, eat food grown in it, and not worry about animals dropping dead in it. A few dandilions are worth that to me.
Fine, so just fucking shoot me for putting off buying a new car in order to score that qp of Acapulco. You people are so fucking picky. You just wait until I get my hydro system set up, dude. Then we’ll see who gets a new car!
It’s funny this topic should come up, because on my walk today, I noticed a neighbour with a lawn that was made up mostly of very short clover. His lawn looked beautiful; it was a gorgeous shade of green, and the clover gave it a very interesting curly texture. Now, all he needs is a sheep to come and graze every so often, and he’s completely au naturel.
Hey - that’s called irony. I find myself keeping him off of neighbors’ lawns. He’ll push his wagon, get bored and start wandering onto a lawn, and I have to get him back to the sidewalk.
Seriously, I know some weed killers are down right poisonous - especially for little kids. Some weedkillers are similar to Agent Orange.
I’m actually intentionally planting several varieties of choking groundcover (meaning it kills grass and weeds) and having that instead of a grass lawn for much of my acreage. Much easier to deal with.
my yard is covered with clover, dandilions, and osage oranges/ locusts surrounded with mulch so i don’t impale my foot when i have to mow.* it looks nice, and the osage/locusts keep people from letting their dogs shit on the lawn.
*[sub]when osage oranges get to be about 7-13 years old, they start dropping spike clusters, like nature’s own caltrops. i’ve seen them go through a shoe!
well said, friend. the ones who water before the shower’s over are also the ones who overfill their pool until there’s baby ruths floating down their driveway.
i wrote a letter that was fairly official looking, as if from our association, as left it stuffed in their doorjam when i knew they were out. it politely got the point across with some reasonable watering tips and didn’t piss off a neighbor.
should no effort on their part materialize, i’ll just turn their water valve off late some night when i know they’re on summer vacation.
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Not to mention that when the osages mature, the females will start dropping inedible fruit which are enormous enough to cause serious head injury in trespassers walking below.
I live in the Madison, WI, and as we all know, it was quite hot and humid about a week ago. The weather was so bad that the city’s water department issued a notice asking people to not water their lawns and conserve water as the water table was dangerously low. The day after the notice was issued, people used more water. They actually set a record. :rolleyes:
During the heat spell, I saw one person with a sprinkler going at noon. Do people not realize that watering your lawn at noon when it’s 95 degrees out does not do much for the lawn? (ooh, and it’s sort of bad for water levels, too…) It’s somewhat common to see sprinklers set on timers and thus going off while it’s raining, or at noon…Sheesh.
How funny. I was just bitching about my neighbor LawnBoy. You’d think Scott’s was going to use a picture of his lawn on their next bag of Turfbuilder.
This guy waters his lawn a day after we get an inch of rain. He mows every other day. No kidding. The guy is literally obsessed with his lawn. I wouldn’t be at all shocked to see him crawling on his stomach with scissors in his hand, looking for stray blades.
Every month or so, ChemLawn is out spraying their poison on his grass. On top of that, LawnBoy spot sprays for weeds. Then he lets his 4-year old daughter play on it. :rolleyes:
Last summer, we had a drought “warning”. We were asked to not water our lawns, and most of us complied. Not LawnBoy! His grass was as green as the Hulk’s ass. The water authority truck pulled up and asked him to cut the sprinklers, which he did. I watched him stand there until the truck left and disappeared over the hill. There goes LawnBoy! I could almost read his myopic mind…“Hey, fuck the water authority, and fuck the neighbors’ need for water, my lawn is my life!” Ticka-ticka-ticka-tick went the sprinklers. Stupid mope. I dropped a dime on him - hey, we get ground water, so it is a limited resource - but I was told that it’s “voluntary” since it’s only a drought warning.
I have yet to turn a sprinkler on this year. It rains at least an inch a week, which is plenty. My yard is relatively weed-free. Personally, I like taking all of 10 minutes a day to unwind, walk around the front or back yard, and hand-pick a few weeds. I have dogs, and have plenty of birds, rabbits, and other wildlife visiting my backyard. I can do without the chemicals, thanks.