Oh...OK then?

Well you know that Summers just around the corner, or at least that Spring is in full effect when you start getting the knocks on the door from the lawn "Care" specialists. A~ informed me this afternoon when I got home that we had had three different companies stop by to talk to her this week. Two of them knocked on the door and gave her the pitch. She informed them that we are an organic house and didn't like to put chemicals on the lawn. They countered, as a good salesman would, with "You do know that we do have fully organic fertilizers that we can use?" Never the one to be outmaneuvered by a slick salesman, A~ parried with "We like to know where everything that we use comes from, so we only buy from local farmers and suppliers." Well, this was enough to convince both of the first companies that we were some kind of strange suburban freaks and deter them. While generally speaking what she said was true, we do like to buy from local farmers and suppliers quite a bit, we have never bought any fertilizers from anyone like that. But nonetheless, if they can't take no for an answer, they need to expect some embellishment right?

The last company to stop by had a couple of people walking around the sidewalk in front of our house looking and pointing at our yard when A~ saw them. She went outside and asked if she could help them with anything. After they gave her generally the same pitch, she and they exchanged much the same conversation as the previous ones. This company, to their credit, was not ready to give up just yet and made a final attempt to win our business by adding "Well you know if you don't like to use fertilizers, we do have some organic products that will kill those dandelions for you." What do you think she said? She tells me she looked them dead in the face and matter-of-factly said "We eat the dandelions, so we don't want any chemicals on them either." Oh man, I wish I could have been there to see the look they gave her when they finally said, "Oh... OK then... well, have a nice day...?!" Priceless! I love that woman!

You know I understand why their in business, it is nice to have a lush green lawn. It's nice to have large sweet tomatoes in the winter too, but are they really worth the price? God made the earth to run in cycles. The ground needs to have some down time too. People burn out and get sick when they run too long, getting up early and working till late, gleaning ever more and more production from themselves. I shouldn't think that the ground is any different. Is feeding it fertilizers to increase production and pesticides and weed killers to keep the diseases and pests as bay really much different than a person working too many hours and taking stimulants to "Stay alert", and vitamins and medicines to stay "healthy"? No. What happens to the people that do that? They get sick, tired, unhealthy and miserable, and over all their time and effort may increase, but their true production and quality level decreases. It's just not a sustainable way to live. Just the same, I may be able to grow things faster and longer with the help of some of today's finest NPK wonder drugs for the garden. But over time the ground will suffer, quality will suffer and the health of myself, my family and my friends will suffer. It's not sustainable. At some point, something has to give.

As A~ and I began to change a lot of the things in our daily lives last year, there came a natural point where one thing led to another. Does it make sense to try to have a healthier home environment if your not going to eat healthier? Why bother to eat healthier if everything you buy is just full of tons of chemicals and growth hormones? Why grow your own food if your just going to mimic all the unsustainable practices that you're trying to get away from to begin with? And on it goes. This is why I refer very often to these changes as "the journey" that we're on. It really is a journey from one place, of relative ignorance of our actions and their effects, to another of greater participation in the process and connection to the world around us. Thanks for peeking in once and a while and traveling with us on it.

P~

Ssshhhh don't tell

You have to keep this a secret or I may get run out of the suburbs.

I don't like lawns.

Nope I don't, just figured that out this afternoon. I was out there mowing it, getting it short for the fall, and thinking to myself about all of the things we do for this plant. We water it, kill the weeds and fertilize it so it will grow fast and lush; then we complain about how often we have to mow it. I did fertilize it early in the spring, and I do have a sprinkler system, but I didn't use any weed killers. (I pulled them with my hands. And for that matter ate many of them. Dandylion and purslane, Mmm Mmm good!) I've come up with a theory that directly relates my level of summer enjoyment and overall happiness to the number of weeds and imperfections in my lawn. It goes as follows:

To control my weeds I can either spray them with a bunch of poisons and then let my kids and my dog run and lay and play in it, but no trouble right? Or I can take the time to pull them all, one by one, investing my time in nothing but manicuring the lawn and miss out on so much of the other things that life offers.

I struck a balance. No chemicals, and I pulled weeds when I had the chance, here or there. I didn't get them all, but you know what, I had a pretty good summer all told. Am I being a little extreme? Yeah maybe a little, but think about it, how much time and effort do we put into our lawns as a nation? What if we put that into something more productive like growing something edible or playing with our kids? Wouldn't we be happier, I know I would.

Oh well, I guess I'll just go pull some more weeds. Have a good day all.

P~