What grass makes me feel like.

It’s not just my hay fever. I just think the whole idea behind lawns, and mowing them, is stupid.

Let’s think about this. We have entire departments of the city whose job it is to issue citations when someone’s grass gets too tall. That’s anything over something like 12″ I think. Why? Because at some point we decided that we weren’t going to allow this one particular plant to get too tall. I have bushes in my front yard that are 3 or 4 feet tall, but that’s okay, because they aren’t grass. I can grow flowers that are basically local weeds, and they might get two feet tall, but that’s okay, because they aren’t grass. So we have to mow it. I use a push mower, which does a terrible job. Most people burn up some fossil fuels.

Mowin’ it old school. Evidence I’m either a masochist or an ascetic.

That right there is everything that’s wrong with the world. Don’t like how this plant looks? Burn some fossil fuels!

But there are some plants that aren’t even okay to have in the front yard! There are communities (I don’t know about in Baltimore, but I bet some of the covenant communities here are like this) where you can’t grow, say, tomatoes in the front yard. Tomatoes! They have flowers. They get some pretty red fruit. But not okay. Why? I guess because they’re food. Can’t have anyone growing

Not an acceptable flower. People might think you aren’t just interested in wasting your huge tracts of land.

food in the front yard! Other plants that do that that are purely decorative are perfectly okay. We can’t have livestock in the city like goats or sheep that would eat the grass, either.

And people say this boils down to property values. You have to prove that your land is completely non-productive or you might devalue your neighbor’s land! One particular plant has a height limit or you might devalue your neighbor’s land! If you really want to prove that you’re super awesome, you

“Can you believe someone was wasting all this land growing crops? I’m so glad I can just ride my mower around on it as a leisure activity! What’s that? Oh, I totally need this much land or else I might be able to see my neighbor.”

can be one of those people who buys up forty acres of farm land and fills it with lawn as faaar as the eye can see. You could put some freaking horses on that land! But no! They smell bad and the gasoline required to run your riding mower isn’t going to burn itself and contribute to the destruction of the planet!

How did we reach this mindset as a species? What is wrong with us?