The not-so-green grass of home: lawn dare

It is bad enough in urban areas. Street after street of urban homes sporting their identical green patches of lawn. The bigger the housing development: the bigger the expanse of green lawn, often weedless. Heaven help the neighbour whose lawn is less cared-for, where dandelions and ragged lengths bespeak, dare we say it: left leanings?
For such is the judgement we place on those who lawns are badly kept.
But here is an argument that all lawns are, indeed, kept for bad reasons. And the argument falls hard on the heels of Food Day, which was July 31.
Right now, market gardens are bursting with good foods, farmers' markets are the place to find healthy local foods and home gardeners are reaping fresh rewards daily.
The rest of us are cutting our grass - which accounted for more than 32 million acres in the United States according to recent research. Never mind that bit about Food Day; green grass is the largest irigated crop, apparently and accounts for about one-quarter of the space in urbaned areas.
But a drive through the countryside, where the size of enormous homes looks even more impressive when surrounded by a few acres of lawn, certainly seems to bespeak a frightful arrogance of wasted land at a time when there have never been more hungry people on this planet.
It is estimated that we spend at least $30 billion to maintain our lawns. The footprint of fertilizing one acre of lawn is equal to a 700-kilometre car trip.
We are connected through our lawns and while we can't judge a family by its income, the unseen piles of boxes in a basement or attic, we can see and compare our neighbour's lawn to ours.
In many cases, our lawns are connecting links to our neighbours where fences and hedges do not exist.
It is a welcome relief and a sign of something important going on when one passes a patchwork of community gardens in an unexpected space in the city.
Sometimes rag-tag, other times ordered rows of staked tomato plants and climbing pea plants, surely the home garden is indeed a sign of people in touch with some vestige of self-sufficiency, the need for contact with the earth and perhaps even a sense of community to be found in - imagine this name: community gardens.
Instead, most of us make sure that our lawn looks "under control" and each house on the block or concession houses its own push lawnmower or riding mower. After all, there is so much grass to cut that we could not possibly share these invaluable pieces of machinery.
It is hard to believe that in this era of the time-crunch, that so many of us would rather devote time to cutting a crop which yields nothing every week, rather than grow something practical.
That said, it will take a significant re-thinking and commitment on our part to change our ways.
Turfing out lawn care means acknowledging our wasteful ways and becoming serious stewards of our own small plots of land.
Planting fruit trees, vegetables, wildflowers or creating a peaceful stone or rock garden are all alternatives. Perhaps the time will come when such startling innovations will be welcome natural attractions on quiet streets with no mowers, trimmers or pesticides.
One can almost imagine a time in the far-off future, when children ask: Why did people have such large lawns?
Acres of lawns: something we need to cut.