TRUE STORIES

Now I like flowers and a new mowed lawn, but there’s something about a good stand of weeds in late Kansas summer, grasshoppers spinning off in all directions as I advance.
Which is why I keep a nice patch (“horse weeds” my neighbor Gloria Oertle calls them) out near the alley between the forsythia and crape myrtle, not far from the rose bushes.
I start cultivating assorted weeds early in the spring. Just about when most of the approximately 60 million Americans with lawns are pursuing perfection by killing them, I’m nurturing dandelions. Nothing’s more striking to me than a backyard full of their gorgeous little golden blooms.
According to William Grimes of The New York Times, author Ted Steinberg wrote in his book titled “AMERICAN GREEN – The Obsessive Quest of the Perfect Lawn,” that, as a canvas for personal expression, the lawn engages the suburban American male at the deepest possible level.
Take, for instance, Jerry Tucker, who turned his yard into a replica of the 12th hole at Augusta National Golf Club.
Drawing upon my mother’s British Fowler blood, I too am trying to replicate a golf hole in my yard — a scraggly brown links expanse from the 14th at Royal St. George’s, complete with Bern hazards and pothole bunkers that would send Tiger Woods to double-bogie land.
But seriously, how did the overwhelming desire for a rolling expanse of green take root here in America? Although Washington and Jefferson had lawns, most citizens did not have the hired labor needed to cut a field of grass with scythes. Average homeowners either raised vegetables in their yards or left them alone. If weeds sprouted, fine. If not, that was fine, too.
Ah yes, the good ol’ days before lawn mowers — when efficiency and urgency did not rule the yard. It was at end of the 19th century that suburbs appeared on the American scene, along with the sprinkler, greatly improved lawn mowers, new ideas about landscaping and a shorter work week.
A researcher investigating the psychology of suburbanites in 1948 observed shrewdly that the American work ethic coexisted uneasily with free time, and that "intense care of the lawn is an excellent resolution of this tension."
Sometimes it goes beyond resolution to insanity. In an all-out assault against the moles that had turned his lawn into a complex network of raised grassy veins, a homeowner in Seattle poured gasoline into the mole holes, tossed in a match and incinerated his yard. Lucky for his neighbors he didn’t have access to nuclear weapons.
Don’t get me wrong, as I said in the opening paragraph, I like flowers and a new-mowed lawn. Around our Victorian home, Linda has planted perennials and annuals that paint our yard with sweeping brush strokes of both subtle and vibrant colors; an ever-evolving Kansas still life. But her plantings are graced with tufts of grass around the trees and along the curb line — in addition to the patch of horse weeds out back.
I’ve lately noticed more homeowners are embracing the native plant movement and turning their lawns into miniature prairies and meadows. Speaking of which, Nellie Shriver, of an organization called the Fruitarian Network, stopped mowing for moral reasons. "It is impossible to mow the grass without harming it," she said. "We believe grass has some sort of consciousness, that it has feelings."
I’ve also seen some vegetable gardens where once I saw mowed grass. Another option I’ve considered is chickens; not only do they eat weeds, but they also fertilize the soil. And an added bonus is organic, free-range eggs! But I doubt my neighbors would think much of the crowing at dawn.
Truth be told, any weed species that has survived the hundreds of millions of years it took to arrive at the present era has acquired some very ingenious and aggressive strategies for disseminating its seeds and flourishing wherever the winds or tides may take it.
Still, sometime in the distant future, will everyone have lawns that look like golf course greens thanks to aggressive seeding, watering, fertilizing and herbiciding?
I’m not sure, but I have great faith in dandelions, and I just don’t think so.
 
J.T. Knoll is a writer, speaker and prevention and wellness coordinator at Pittsburg State University. He also operates Knoll Training, Consulting & Counseling Services in Pittsburg. He can be reached at 231-0499 or jtknoll@swbell.net