Landscaping

[blue_shadows9]

So, it's spring, and I live in a house with a lawn and bushes and flowers and things.  Now is the time to deal with lawn care, a subject about which I knew absolutely nothing prior to quizzing Todd about it this afternoon.  Apparently mulch keeps weeds to a minimum.  Who knew?  Everyone but me, I suspect

Comments

[krsnas_favorite]

Hear hear!

[nicwhite86]

I disagree with basically all of this, except for the bit about how houses should be better made. It's stupid how houses are basically built to fall down. But they should definately not have fireplaces and chimneys - that's just pumping shit into the atmosphere and it takes a lot of time people don't have to organise the firewood, etc. Fireplaces are obsolete now that you can have gas

[blue_shadows9]

It is unreasonable because, to quote a publication* of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

[nicwhite86]

If you need fertiliser to grow a lawn then you aren't doing it right. Where I live is damn sure worse for plants than basically anywhere in America outside the deserts and we cope while not even being allowed to use sprinklers more than twice a week. There also no reason for most of those stats to exist. You don't need to mow anywhere near that often and grass clippings can be used for mulch and are bio-degradable even if they go to landfil.

And dandelions are incredibly ugly and crowd out flowers and any other plants you put anywhere and are almost impossible to control.

What do you mean by living inside a city?

[blue_shadows9]

It's pretty unfair to compare your patch of Australia to the multitude of environments that make up the entire country of America. Maybe not every place in America needs fertilizer, but in those places the plants grow so easily that you do actually need to mow a lot. Maybe not every place in America requires a lot of lawn mowing, but you do need fertilizer to grow plants. The problem isn't lawns per se - perhaps in some places lawns are perfectly fine and pretty low-maintenance - but why should every patch of land with a house on it anywhere in the world automatically have a golf-course-style lawn? It's a one-size-fits-all ideal that actually fits very few sizes. I can't defend the throwing away of grass clippings - that really is sheer stupidity

[kittenofwrath]

I honestly didn't even know that there were some housing associations that dictated what flowers people could and couldn't put in their yard. That seems really ridiculous to me. If you own a property, it seems reasonable that the owner should get to decide how their property looks (with exceptions, of course- like, to prevent pest infestation it might be best to keep the lawn relatively trim, etc, or getting rid of health hazards).

I'm totally in favor of properties that require no lawn mowing, too, for the reasons you went into below. I've seen properties that were totally just made up of moss, rocks, and gardens, and it was even prettier IMO than a lawn.

If there was a way to get rid of dandelions without spraying chemicals all over the place, I think an owner should have the right to do that (because everyone has different aesthetic preferences) but I keep seeing commercials along the lines of "Don't be THAT neighbor, the one who lets wildflowers grow!" and my reaction has always been, "WTF?" :)

[blue_shadows9]

Ha. They dictate that and so much more. Living in a Nice Neighborhood with Good Schools means conforming to certain standards, you see. What kinds of plants you can have, how your house looks, how tall your grass can get, what you can build on your property, what kinds of curtains you can have - these kinds of things are all determined by the HOA, in the service of keeping property values high

[kittenofwrath]

That seems really restrictive....gah. I mean...if it's your house shouldn't you be able to do what you want with it?? Seems logical to me, but I had no idea that conformity was heralded as the ideal in so many housing communities. Some people I know in Arlington, for example, live in a pretty good area but all the houses seem pretty different there- different yards, different curtains and outdoor decorations, etc. So I'm guessing the HOA stuff is more common in some counties than others?

Although, in my condo papers it says "the only curtains that can be displayed towards the outside can be white," so I just avoided the issue by not getting any curtains..although I'm on the 16th floor so I doubt I'd get in too much trouble, since nobody can really see my window anyway. ;)