The grass is greener?

Yesterday I was mowing the front yard and forgot to turn off my brain. It wasn't a new train of thought, but seemed to have picked up speed or a new diesel engine. What is it with lawns? Why do we, who have lawns, plant these monocultures that absorb hours of precious time through mowing, weeding, aerating, raking, watering and fertilizing? Maybe you don't do all these things--I'm not either--but I do mow. Here's the question I had not thought of before: who has lawns, historically I mean? I suggest that lawns are an accessory found on the estates of the wealthy, the landed gentry, and so on. So when some American said, "A man's home is his castle," someone else figured they better come with an expanse of high maintenance green. The thing is, those who have the estates of the wealthy hire people to take care of that green stuff!

So here we are with this crazy situation. The ideal is a lush, consistently green carpet of grass, which is basically a monoculture even though there are a few varieties of grass seed mixed in that bag you find at your neighborhood hardware store. Monocultures are hard to maintain because every plant is vulnerable to the same environmental risks or conditions. Then I realized that the only other people who plant monocultures do so to make money by selling that product, or people who want to eat what is produced (perhaps through the intermediary of a grazing animal). So far I haven't heard of any way to have financial gain through the care and feeding of a lawn!

When farmers plant crops to sell, they rotate what's planted to avoid depleting the soil nutrients. In the good old days it used to be a four year rotation, but now it's often just two, with fertilizer taking up the load of what is lost by not having a year of alfalfa growing in a field. Again with the craziness since lawns accept no rotation whatsoever. And did you know that clover used to be acceptable in one's yard until an herbicide was developed that could take out clover and leave the grass? Personally, I like the clover in my yard.

Unfortunately, gardens require just as much, or maybe more, maintenance.