My father, and mother after he died, spent 40 fucking years raking the leaves from under the shrubs and throwing them away. Our house was surrounded by lush bushes, entire house, entire back yard. Took little me and dad 4 hard hours to trim all that.
Got back from taking botany related classes in college. Tried to explain that bagging the lawn clippings and raking the leaves would kill everything. She wouldn’t hear it.
Anyway, dad’s dead, mom’s dead, entire fucking yard is dead. Lost it all but some barely hagin’ in there grass. It’s a fucking desert.
Old lady on the corner religiously rakes and burns her leaves, goes after it like it’s her fucking job. We got a max of 2" of topsoil in NW Florida, max. Her entire lot is nearly all sand.
A lot of people love their lawn toys (and hate municipal workers and well draining streets I guess).
I lived in Massachusetts for a while and the city I lived in directed people to blow/rake their leaves into the road so a giant vacuum truck could collect them.
Yeah that’s true. There are a ton of arbitrary defined and applied lawn laws in the states. The “no weeds” ones are always funny too, bc more often then not the grass you imported from Asia is more a weed than the native flowers
plus the soil can carry invasive weeds, and diseases, or pests too. and ornamental plants often come from places like asia,etc. people are still growing latana camara in some places.
There was a little old black lady in Tulsa many years ago whose entire front yard was a mix of native plants and garden. It was very nice and organized, nothing tacky at all. City rolled up and razed it flat. She was crying on TV, I was some mix of enraged and crying.
One winter I lost every plant I owned, and that loss kept me away from houseplants for over a decade. I cannot imagine her pain.
Anyway, where I’m at now I’m basically free to treat our house like white trash. No one can say jack about how I’m keeping it and I’ve shared some ecosystem success stories in this thread.
Where i grew up you could have an edible native plant that mosquitoes hate, fixing nitrogen as your ground cover, but no the hoa says grass not mint. I wanted to do guerrilla gardening with wild strawberries there too, but never got around to it.
That said, one non native plant belonged there, the earth made the dandelion one of her greatest and most beloved children, and who am I to disagree.
I was taught as child to hate and fight dandelions. Learned in college that “weeds” like that pull nutrients up from deep in the soil. When they die and rot, those deep roots turn into channels for water.
In the same sense that nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, a little bit of killing goes a long way towards making a desert.
Yeah they aren’t native here but they’re good at playing nice with native plants. If you notice them outcompeting native taproot plants then go after them, but they’re pretty, they pull water from deep while helping keep deeper soil nice and soily, pollinators often like them, and they’re not only edible but good for you.
That’s why I love my twin blade mower. Turns all yard trimmings into basically powder that feeds the lawn and even helps prevent moisture from evaporating out of the soil.
I also use controlled natural selection so that only shit that can survive our brutal summers grows, so I don’t even need to water.
Was just saying, we got a max of 2" of topsoil in NW Florida. I’m throwing everything back in the yard. Every weed we pull we chunk on the ground. Don’t care if it looks the shit, I’ll hit it with the mower eventually.
It’s impossible to overstate how long topsoil takes to form and how easy it is to trash. At 54, I honestly don’t think I’ll live long enough to add .25" of good soil to this yard. But I’m fuckin’ trying!
Plus lawns are typically domed up to avoid sogginess, causing tons of runoff into the storm drains (including runoff from sprinklers). It’s lunacy.
I work in municipal government, and I have very strong feeling about leaf blowers.
All these assholes blowing all the great fertilizing trulimmings and dirt off their lawn and into the street to clog up the storm drains.
My father, and mother after he died, spent 40 fucking years raking the leaves from under the shrubs and throwing them away. Our house was surrounded by lush bushes, entire house, entire back yard. Took little me and dad 4 hard hours to trim all that.
Got back from taking botany related classes in college. Tried to explain that bagging the lawn clippings and raking the leaves would kill everything. She wouldn’t hear it.
Anyway, dad’s dead, mom’s dead, entire fucking yard is dead. Lost it all but some barely hagin’ in there grass. It’s a fucking desert.
Old lady on the corner religiously rakes and burns her leaves, goes after it like it’s her fucking job. We got a max of 2" of topsoil in NW Florida, max. Her entire lot is nearly all sand.
Bro if ur using a leaf blower to remove leaves from your lawn and not from your driveway you gotta be extra special
A lot of people love their lawn toys (and hate municipal workers and well draining streets I guess).
I lived in Massachusetts for a while and the city I lived in directed people to blow/rake their leaves into the road so a giant vacuum truck could collect them.
Yeah that’s true. There are a ton of arbitrary defined and applied lawn laws in the states. The “no weeds” ones are always funny too, bc more often then not the grass you imported from Asia is more a weed than the native flowers
plus the soil can carry invasive weeds, and diseases, or pests too. and ornamental plants often come from places like asia,etc. people are still growing latana camara in some places.
There was a little old black lady in Tulsa many years ago whose entire front yard was a mix of native plants and garden. It was very nice and organized, nothing tacky at all. City rolled up and razed it flat. She was crying on TV, I was some mix of enraged and crying.
One winter I lost every plant I owned, and that loss kept me away from houseplants for over a decade. I cannot imagine her pain.
Anyway, where I’m at now I’m basically free to treat our house like white trash. No one can say jack about how I’m keeping it and I’ve shared some ecosystem success stories in this thread.
Where i grew up you could have an edible native plant that mosquitoes hate, fixing nitrogen as your ground cover, but no the hoa says grass not mint. I wanted to do guerrilla gardening with wild strawberries there too, but never got around to it.
That said, one non native plant belonged there, the earth made the dandelion one of her greatest and most beloved children, and who am I to disagree.
I was taught as child to hate and fight dandelions. Learned in college that “weeds” like that pull nutrients up from deep in the soil. When they die and rot, those deep roots turn into channels for water.
In the same sense that nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, a little bit of killing goes a long way towards making a desert.
Yeah they aren’t native here but they’re good at playing nice with native plants. If you notice them outcompeting native taproot plants then go after them, but they’re pretty, they pull water from deep while helping keep deeper soil nice and soily, pollinators often like them, and they’re not only edible but good for you.
They don’t want the leaves covering up the unnaturally green grass, and if they clog up the storm system that’s someone downhill’s problem.
That’s why I love my twin blade mower. Turns all yard trimmings into basically powder that feeds the lawn and even helps prevent moisture from evaporating out of the soil.
I also use controlled natural selection so that only shit that can survive our brutal summers grows, so I don’t even need to water.
Was just saying, we got a max of 2" of topsoil in NW Florida. I’m throwing everything back in the yard. Every weed we pull we chunk on the ground. Don’t care if it looks the shit, I’ll hit it with the mower eventually.
It’s impossible to overstate how long topsoil takes to form and how easy it is to trash. At 54, I honestly don’t think I’ll live long enough to add .25" of good soil to this yard. But I’m fuckin’ trying!