Thoughts on Tending the Turf

You might think going green when it comes to lawn care eliminates some tedious work for Glop and I.  Not so. We still have to mow the lawn more often than we’d like.  We still have to pull some weeds.  More than that, we have to deal with what it looks like au naturel.

In the backyard, we have a barren strip of land I call “The Runway”:

Behind that is a lovely hill chock full of rocks hidden like land mines, just waiting to blow out the back of the mower and take out a shin.  The rules here are strict:  no beer allowed before firing up the mower.

In the front, we have a loose conglomeration of low-lying  weeds that pass for a lawn – from a distance.

Our front lawn, up close and personal...

Every spring, I try to make peace with our lawn and accept it for who it is.  But I can’t stop myself from obsessing about its look, just a little.  The first year we lived here, we tried to grow clover, which is supposed to be self-fertilizing and more environmentally friendly than, say, Kentucky bluegrass.  As you can see, it didn’t really like it here.

Last year, crabgrass was the über villain.  We fought it off valiantly, if not successfully, with an expensive four-step organic treatment involving corn gluten.  The timing of each application had to be precise, and that’s where we failed.  Ab was a teething 18-mo-old with unpredictable sleep patterns;  Sun was just embarking on her ferocious fours.  A free minute couldn’t be found at any hour of the day, never mind one that coincided with the strict application of fertilizer.  We gave it our best shot, but by August, crabgrass had staked its claim.

This year, we weren’t going to do anything.  But then we cheated a little and applied Scotts Weed and Feed.  I feel dirty just thinking about it.

Why do I want a lush, perfectly uniform carpet of green grass enveloping my domain?  What compels me to go out and cut it every weekend and feel bad that it does not look like a storybook lawn?  It tortures me that I cannot mow in symmetrical rows; I berate myself when I miss a patch.  What is with all this lawn guilt?

According to a book I read recently, called “American Green:  The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn,” by Ted Steinberg, the lawn as we know it is a cultural phenomenon thrust upon us by Bill Levit (who built Levittown on Long Island) and perpetuated by corporations like Scotts.  Maybe there is some truth in that.  Based on the number of lawn trucks I’ve seen whizzing through our neighborhood, quite a lot of people are convinced by someone that a golf-course-like lawn is only one more toxic treatment away.  Google “lawn care” and you get almost 41 million hits.  The American front yard is a gold mine.

I’m waking up to the fact that the perfect lawn is an illusive dream, and I’m not going to take it any more.  Really.  I’m going to push back.  I’m going to let my lawn go native.  Take that Scotts!  Yeah right.  I can say that now because my lawn is looking really good after a week of rain and a nice hair cut.  Let’s see if I can hang on to my convictions come next Saturday, when the dandelions are blooming and the kids are yet again playing in the mud of “The Runway.”

HHWs: What’s in Your Garage?

This weekend, I was planning to pack up all the old cleaners, paints, and other assorted chemicals that have accumulated in my garage over the last three years and drive them to the town dump.  I jumped online yesterday to see how much said disposal might cost, and got quite an education in hazardous household waste (HHW).  Made me think twice about the way I’ve been doing things around the house.

What are HHW products and why do they cause problems?  Certain household cleaners and home improvement products (think paint thinner, herbicides, oven cleaner, and the like) contain ingredients that are toxic, ignitable, or corrosive.  When used on your lawn or poured down your drain, they can make their way into the groundwater and pollute the environment.  Greenplanetethics.com has what seems a fairly comprehensive list of what constitutes an HHW and how to identify them in your home.

Here’s a look at some of the nasties in my garage:

According to the Nashua Regional Planning Commission, which controls hazardous waste collection where I live, “when you see the words “caution,” “poison,” “warning,” or “danger” on a product label, you are dealing with a potentially hazardous material that cannot be disposed of as regular waste.”  In my town, a $10 fee will allow me to dispose of 10 gallons of material.  The EPA’s website states that the average home can accumulate as much as 100 pounds of HHW in the basement and garage and in storage closets. That would be a really big bill!

I’m glad I’m doing something about this stockpile now, before it gets any bigger.  Besides the cost, though, there are the kids to consider.  You wouldn’t think it, but the older they get, the more creative they get with their play, and you never know what they might do with that bug poison you meant to clean out of the spray bottle (which you never should have used that way in the first place!).  And is it really safe to have all these chemicals residing near each other?

The bad news is I can’t just drive these chemicals to the dump any old time.  According to our town’s website, HHWs are not accepted there.  The good news is that there are designated times and sites for HHW collection; dates are listed for May and June.   For anyone who lives in Southern New Hampshire, you may want to check out the Nashua Regional Planning Commission HHW web page for complete details.

From now on, I’m going to make an effort to buy more products that can safely be disposed of in the trash or down the drain.  Or make them myself.  Under Earth Friendly Alternatives at the NRPC website, there is an impressive list of general and kitchen cleaners that can be made with things I already have around the house – baking soda, vinegar, and lemons, to name a few.  Join me in printing it out and tacking it to the fridge as a reminder, if nothing else, to try to be more green.  I am psyched to try baby oil as a hand cleaner next time I paint the kitchen cabinets.

“We are living in a false economy where the price of goods and services does not include the cost of waste and pollution,” Lynn Landes, Founder and Director of Zero Waste America.

Earth Day, Homegrown

As a mother of two small children, I often feel like I live under a rock when it comes to current events.  Sadly, I get most of my news from a small but trustworthy publication – my daughter’s preschool newsletter.  I happened to glance at it on the bulletin board last night and saw with a jolt that Earth Day was today.  While we are not an extreme “green” household, we do our best to reduce, reuse and recycle.  I have to confess that I do toss the occasional peanut butter jar or yogurt carton.  I’ve tried and failed at cloth diapers.  And I keep meaning to find out what my carbon footprint is so I can reduce it.  All this aside, I do actively try to teach the girls that it is up to us to take care of the world we live in.  So how could I, in good conscience, fail to honor Earth Day in some way?

I didn’t have time to research what, if any, activities my hometown might have planned, so I came up with my own small agenda for Earth Day.  You may think it’s just ridiculous, or that it makes no impact on global warming or saving the Arctic or any of those other large and complex environmental problems.  But I firmly believe the best thing I can do to ensure the health of the planet is to teach my children how to respect it.  If we raised a whole generation that valued earth’s well being, imagine where we’d be tomorrow.

For Earth Day, I decided we would 1) walk rather than drive home from preschool; 2) try line drying our clothes;3) creatively reuse household stuff to make new toys.  When I mentioned to Sonya that we were going to walk home from preschool, she one-upped me by very excitedly pointing out that we could also bring a bag to collect garbage.  I was one proud mama!

Here’s what really happened:  1)  we did walk home from preschool and it went much better than I ever expected.  Abigail slept most of the way and Sonya walked all 1.5 miles without whining – a new record.  She couldn’t wait to put on a vinyl glove and start saving the planet one scrap of litter at a time.  We filled a whole grocery bag with cigarette butts, plastic straws, half-filled water bottles, old lollipop sticks and, oddly enough, a slew of broken pencils.  I had to apologize profusely for failing to bring more bags.  We vowed to take more trash walks in the future, albeit much shorter ones.

2) I line-dried sheets.  Well, three sheets and a pillow case, to be exact.  I was off on my timing and didn’t get the laundry out earlier enough and etc., etc.  My fault.  But I will try again, as who doesn’t love the smell of sunshine in the sheets!

3)We  succeeded in reusing paper towel tubes to fashion a nifty and oh-so-attractive ball run that is now part of my family room decor. (For anyone interested, just save your paper towel and toilet paper tubes, tape ’em together, and attach them to the wall at an angle with painter’s tape.  Will fit beads, cheap rubber balls from vending machines, and other small objects – get creative!)

When all’s said and done, it’s been a great Earth Day.  We’ll try to continue what we’ve started for the whole year.  Next Earth Day, the girls will be a little older, mama will be a little saner, and we’ll aim a little higher.