"Greening" the lawn

I can come up with an opinion about anything...

"Traditional" lawn maintenance burns as much gasoline in an hour as driving 100 miles, results in as much petrochemical spillage as the Exxon Valdez, causes air pollution with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and ozone, wastes water, damages waterways.


In keeping with living 'greener'-
1. We let the lawn go brown for the summer. OK, some of that was just neglect, but the front lawn was intentional. It greens up nicely when the rains start in the fall. Fortunately, we dont live in Sacramento, where citizens can be harrassed into watering their lawns during an official drought!
2. We let the lawn go 'diverse'. This was also passive, mostly. Anything that stays small (clover, small-leaf ground covers, yarrow, alyssum, violets) can stay. I do pull dandelions by hand. Those are fed either to the compost pile or to the chickens.

3. We bought this new high-tech no-emissions bio-powered mower. It uses only renewable bio-energy, does not result in toxic spills and smog (unless certain legumes have been used in the bioprocess), and provides useful calorie-burning cardio-exercise for the overweight operator. It's quiet as well as healthy to use.

Obviously, with a brown lawn, the new mower isn't needed now. I'll see how it works this fall, before giving up the more traditional rotary (but electric) mower.

Proudly called "American". Of course, the package states "made in China". sigh....

(Image at the top is copyright-expired from wikipedia commons)