Im contemplating my lawn.

[DogSnout]

Modern lawns are gay. You don't get pretty wildflowers or any cool wildlife, you just get the same bland grass that's too cucked to grow without you caring for it. You did the right thing, OP.

Also, give us updates on the baby birds. They sound cute.

 

[Corpun]

There is an impulse in me to quarter off part of my lawn at some point as a 'no mow zone' and just see what grows there in a year or more

 

[Dr. Barry Nyle]

When I let my yard go wild I notice more bees and wildlife thriving. I'm always reminded of Sayyid Qutb's remark about the American obsession with lawns. His thoughts of course spawned MidEast terror, which over stretched the empire leading to the collapse. Overmowing, we've also caused a collapse in bees. Kinda poetic or something.

 

[Roast Chicken]

I've got a lawn. I've never had it treated though so it grows buttercups, dasies, dandelions and clovers etc. I hate mowing it, gonna grow more herbs 'n' veg on it since we're supposed to be due a food crisis. Grass is a waste of space.

 

[Slappy McGherkin]

I have nice backyard with citrus trees, gardens, and some grass that I don't fuss over too much. It's green and an oasis here in the desert. Butterflies, hummingbirds, other birds abound. We all need a little greenspace.

One of the biggest travesties to nature I see locally are those that completely strip their backyard and install astroturf. Yep, plastic grass. How lazy do you have to be to do that?

 

[Nate Higgers]

Some liberals/“environmentalists” wax poetic about how terrible lawns are for the environment and the monoculture of it all and whatnot. You know what sucks? Having a pool.

It’s a constant money pit

 

[mindlessobserver]

Modern lawns are gay. You don't get pretty wildflowers or any cool wildlife, you just get the same bland grass that's too cucked to grow without you caring for it. You did the right thing, OP.

Also, give us updates on the baby birds. They sound cute.

Baby birds are in progress. I have no idea how that tiny bird managed all of those.



Pretty sure my bird is either a wood thrush or a starling. Hard to figure out which. Leaning towards the Thrush though due to the concert on my porch a few days ago.

Also vindicates me not nuking my lawn like a boomer. Thrushes are omnivores and mostly eat insects which would not be present in a nuked lawn.

 

[SCSI]

Baby birds are in progress. I have no idea how that tiny bird managed all of those.

View attachment 3344692

Pretty sure my bird is either a wood thrush or a starling. Hard to figure out which. Leaning towards the Thrush though due to the concert on my porch a few days ago.

Also vindicates me not nuking my lawn like a boomer. Thrushes are omnivores and mostly eat insects which would not be present in a nuked lawn.

Beautiful photo. Eggs don't seem to match what I could find for either wood thrushes or starlings, though...

Wood thrush eggs (bright blue, no spots -- the speckled one in there is a cowbird egg):


Starling eggs (pale blue, no spots):


Looks a lot like house finch eggs (left), house sparrow (middle), or Carolina chickadee eggs (right).

Seems like a lot of chickadee eggs are whitish with the abundant dark speckles, so if Carolinas aren't in your area, perhaps one of their cousins is, and all of them are definitely feathery little music machines. But many finches are also cheerful, nonstop songsters -- if you hear calls that sound kind of like a cat mewing, as well as explosions of tweets and warbly songs (sometimes at deafening volume, somehow), good chance it's a finch. (Females are purely tan, buff, and off-white, while the males have a prominent red blush on their faces, heads, and extending down onto their chests, that can vary in intensity from a pale rose to nearly cardinal scarlet.)

 

[mindlessobserver]

Update. She's absolutely demolishing the clover and pokeweed shoots.

 

[Aunt Carol]

Probably late, but outsidepride is great for clover either ground cover or cover crop seeds, depending on how crazy you want to get with it. If you want a pound of California poppy seeds or lacy phacelia, that's where to go.

I hate grass but I'm too lazy to systematically kill all of it in my yard, plus there's already so much not-grass that I'd hate to lose. When there's a hole in the grass, I throw in clover seed and hope for the best. Self-heal is good and hardy, but it's hard to propagate by seed.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Lawn update. The deer in the previous photo had two fawns. All three of them went through this afternoon.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Lawn update. I dug two trenches across it over the winter. Made it look like a world War 1 battle field. In those trenches I stuck apple seeds I had harvested over the year from apples from the grocery store.

A few weeks ago.



All up and down the trenches. Baby apple trees, from seed and taking over. No transplanting which means the ones that make it will have a tap root going deep. And I won't even know what I will end up with because wild grown apple trees produce their own type.

I have complicated feels looking at these things. Something so small with so much potential. They are growing quick too. I have to imagine if I had astroturfed my lawn back when I bought this property these little guys would not be so happy

 

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

Lawn update. I dug two trenches across it over the winter. Made it look like a world War 1 battle field. In those trenches I stuck apple seeds I had harvested over the year from apples from the grocery store.

A few weeks ago.

View attachment 5100691

All up and down the trenches. Baby apple trees, from seed and taking over. No transplanting which means the ones that make it will have a tap root going deep. And I won't even know what I will end up with because wild grown apple trees produce their own type.

I have complicated feels looking at these things. Something so small with so much potential. They are growing quick too. I have to imagine if I had astroturfed my lawn back when I bought this property these little guys would not be so happy

I had always presumed retail apple seeds from the fruit were genetically engineered by Monsanto not to yield new crops.

 

[mindlessobserver]

I had always presumed retail apple seeds from the fruit were genetically engineered by Monsanto not to yield new crops.

No, the humble apple is actually a very hardy crop that wants to live. Retail apple seeds are all viable. The issue is a combination of soil, climate and timing. Timing being the biggest factor. Apple seeds need to spend an entire winter in their planting location. Most people ignore that part. They also need years to reach maturity and any number of things can go wrong, which means you need to dedicate a large amount of space for a couple trees that may or may not make it after a decade.

Which apparently is why you don't hear too much about people trying to grow apples from Seed. But from what I have read that is the only real way to do it, because Apples HATE transplantation. It fucks with their natural rhythm which is based around all four seasons. Only apple trees from Seed reach their full potential. And the fun part about that is they are not type specific. My seeds were a mix of Gala and Macintosh seeds, but they can incorporate genetic information from other types (or each other) to produce entirely new strains of apple.

The exciting part about using retail apple seeds is I have absolutely no fucking clue what is growing. They are mutts. They could grow true to type, or I could end up with something completely new

I also stuck a peach and red bud sapling out there. Both rescues from the bargain bin at the grocery store. They seem to be loving life. Also, since I didn't nuke my lawn there is a huge pile of wildflowers all over attracting bees and butterflies. If my fruit trees make it I will have a legit orchard In a few years.

 

[Little oak tree]

Ostensibly right now I should be killing all these plants with fire and importing some grass seed and turf builder to make the perfect mat of green. But then I think to myself, "this is what autistic Boomers do." They spend thousands of dollars exterminating the native plants and then bring in non native plants that will die within a year and force a repeat of the process? Why?

Cheap, and even more if they are useless, dead and dry weeds.

 

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

No, the humble apple is actually a very hardy crop that wants to live. Retail apple seeds are all viable. The issue is a combination of soil, climate and timing. Timing being the biggest factor. Apple seeds need to spend an entire winter in their planting location. Most people ignore that part. They also need years to reach maturity and any number of things can go wrong, which means you need to dedicate a large amount of space for a couple trees that may or may not make it after a decade.

Which apparently is why you don't hear too much about people trying to grow apples from Seed. But from what I have read that is the only real way to do it, because Apples HATE transplantation. It fucks with their natural rhythm which is based around all four seasons. Only apple trees from Seed reach their full potential. And the fun part about that is they are not type specific. My seeds were a mix of Gala and Macintosh seeds, but they can incorporate genetic information from other types (or each other) to produce entirely new strains of apple.

The exciting part about using retail apple seeds is I have absolutely no fucking clue what is growing. They are mutts. They could grow true to type, or I could end up with something completely new

I also stuck a peach and red bud sapling out there. Both rescues from the bargain bin at the grocery store. They seem to be loving life. Also, since I didn't nuke my lawn there is a huge pile of wildflowers all over attracting bees and butterflies. If my fruit trees make it I will have a legit orchard In a few years.

I was mostly basing my assumptions on research I did as a kindergartener planting apple seeds in the sandbox of my elementary school.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Lawn update. Frogs are breeding in the the standing water left in the corner part of my backyard. This was a huge surprise. Nowhere near a lake, pond, or creek. But the damn thing is full of tadpoles. I actually went over there intending to flip it over and bleach it as part of usual mosquito counter measures but the tadpoles were so thick my attention was immediately drawn and smiting hand stayed.

This is actually big news. Frogs in general are on a massive decline due to acid rain and general pollution. The fact that some standing water on my property is now lousy with them is good news in general.

Busy researching how I can help those fuckers grow up. I can't imagine that small little pool is enough by itself but I so want it to happen because frogs wage Jihad on wasps and mosquitos.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Cutting my lawn with just a wheedwhacker at this point. The entire area is a combination of native grasses, succulents, the baby apple trees I planted last year, golden rod (fucking pollen), Butter cups and Violets. Was very cool this early spring. The entire thing was a cacophony of Purple and Gold. Really pretty. Cutting the plants back down to size I found a breeding pair of Box turtles. Thankfully they went into their shells as I approached, so I was able to move them both to the woodline and out of the way. If I had been using a riding mower they would have been utterly toast. A deer also came by after I had finished cutting things down and started chowing down on all the free plants I had set on the ground like a salad.

 

[Anasûrimbor Kellhus]

Ostensibly right now I should be killing all these plants with fire and importing some grass seed and turf builder to make the perfect mat of green. But then I think to myself, "this is what autistic Boomers do." They spend thousands of dollars exterminating the native plants and then bring in non native plants that will die within a year and force a repeat of the process? Why?

natural lawns are so much better I get so many bees and bunnies. Its good for biodiversity the pure single grass is a boomer nightmare abomination against God.

 

[Otterly]

Mine is a mess. It’s full of dandelions, random small low growing plants, and thistles. I always pull out the thistles because they have thorns, I take out some of the dandelions because there are billions of the fuckers and I use the roots.
The rest, frankly, I leave. There’s a little patch of tiny purple flowers that’s been spreading and loads of clover, and I leave both of them. I often think about just seeding the whole thing with low clover and mountain thyme.

But I do mow it - there’s enough flowers elsewhere and we have ticks here, and the kids spend a lot of time in the garden. No mowing equals ticks and shit that bites.

Fiskars do the best weed pulling tool in existence.