Rant of the day - Of neighbors and lawns [Archive]

pinkytoe

11-4-17, 8:47pm

So we seem to have landed on a street where the retired men spend their days tending turf. Mowing, blowing, watering endlessly - every blade green and perfect. And now it is fall and leaves are everywhere yet they are out there daily blowing them off their lawns. One even squirts a hose into the tree canopy to coax off the last of the leaves. Having left a land of intermittent drought and being a fan of native plants, this is all driving me a bit nuts. Today one of them mentioned that if some of us would take care of our lawns, he wouldn't have to worry about leaves so much which I guess is directed at us. It makes no sense to me to rake up leaves until they are done falling. Even then, bare ground loves leaves that help nourish the soil. I don't want to irritate the neighbors, but I guess I''ll go out tomorrow and rake some leaves and throw them in the backyard where they can't be seen. Grr...

razz

11-4-17, 9:44pm

Bored retired neighbours are a pain. It becomes a competition to see who has the greenest lushest lawn.

Our neighbourhood has a similar problem. Some have municipal water watering systems for their lawns but some had private wells dug at the time of building their homes to water their lawn. In the heat of a dry summer, I will water once a week to help the grass survive. My immediate neighbour's lawn to the left but separated by my driveway, mows the lawn every second day, waters from a well every day, even to the point of needing to spray for 'crane flies'. I had never heard of them before so googled these bugs.

"Crane flies are typically associated with moist vegetative habitats. Crane fly larvae can be found in moist soil feeding on decomposing vegetation and various plant roots. Some species may be found in streams feeding on small aquatic insects, invertebrates, and any decaying plant life found near the surface." These neighbours are watering so much that they trigger bugs rarely found in our area.

The neighbour adjacent and to the right rarely mows, has not fertilized the lawn and never waters. We share a lovely population of dandelions and other native weeds. Life is rather interesting but I figure there things to get excited about and lawns are not one of them.

It is amusing to see to what efforts some will go for a lush green lawn so appreciate your struggle to strike a balance.

iris lilies

11-4-17, 11:21pm

As I cast about looking for other places to live, I see a neighborhood of older houses on big lots in the city across the river. I was (and still am) interested in that old subdivision but they rolling green lawn people, and the houses sit back with that large green space in front.

I think they would resent us, Ma and Pa Kettle, tearing up the perfect turf of their neighborhood to plant veggies and flowers.

now, one of my friends in the iris society bought a McMansion in Turfland but all of her iris plantings are behind her house. At least for now. Hahaha, she will run out of room eventually, she just put 800 cultivars in the ground. With that kind of iris addiction no turf is safe!

Chicken lady

11-4-17, 11:39pm

Do you have a mulching mower?

where do all these leaves go when they are blown “away” by leaf blowers? I visualize them being wafted from lawn to lawn until they finally come to rest at your place.

Mow them into mulch and let them stay!

Williamsmith

11-5-17, 1:33am

I detest the pollution of leaf burners. Piles of leave smoldering day and night. But to the OPs point....it does become and addiction. I had about an acre and a half of green grass to maintain for 20 years. When I retired, it was therapy to mow on my John Deere, roll the lawn with a big metal rolling water tank, fertilize against dandelions and Japanese beetle grubs, rake and mulch leaves, trim with a power weed whacker....and drink all the time doing it. Take away the drinking and it wasn’t therapy. And yes, the neighbors on either side were in symphony with me. But when I took up mowing a golf course for a part time job, the fun disappeared. After moving on a Ford 2000 tractor with a sixteen foot gang mower all day long...I came home to face three hours of lawn care. Lost it’s allure. I figured all the cost of maintaining and the time and decided to pay somebody else to do it ....so I moved to a condo. I still drink now but I do it watching some other person fuss over my lawn for different reasons.

catherine

11-5-17, 5:50am

where do all these leaves go when they are blown “away” by leaf blowers? I visualize them being wafted from lawn to lawn until they finally come to rest at your place.

Our township will vacuum them off the curb, so people typically use their blowers to push them down to the street. I shake my head all the time. I particularly shake my head at the neighbor who always bags his organic stuff into big contractor bags for the garbageman to take. Makes me crazy. We mulch the leaves into the grass, and if we have too many, I put the mulched leaves into the compost.

I think we have a few too many weeds in our lawn but most of them are beneficial: the white clover and the dandelions don't bother me at all. I'd much rather have a few weeds than fertilize my lawn.

Williamsmith, we can't burn leaves where we live. It's been outlawed for decades. I'm surprised you still have it in your area.

Yppej

11-5-17, 6:16am

I think they would resent us, Ma and Pa Kettle, tearing up the perfect turf of their neighborhood to plant veggies and flowers
I did this. No more lawn left. In addition to flowers and veggies I have a bunch of blue rug junipers. Now I spend my time weeding instead of mowing.

goldensmom

11-5-17, 7:40am

I am retired and waiting for the bored part to set in. :) We blow leaves several times a season due to the many huge maple trees in our yards. My husband blows leaves with a front mounted leaf blower on a garden tractor and it is not a real hard thing to do. The leaves blow into a field so with the nearest neighbor ½ mile away it bothers no one. I like the look of a leaf covered lawn but if left over the winter we just have a deep, soggy mess of leaves to remove in the spring. We have neighbors who mow their lawns maybe twice a year and most of don’t care what the other does, just a difference in priorities.

Float On

11-5-17, 8:16am

I spent yesterday out in the yard moving leaves and picking up pebbles to add to a walkway in the backyard I'm building. It's the Ozarks pebbles just come up through the ground. It's plenty of time to think about things. I got to wondering about retired men and wondered if there were any anywhere that were so obsessed with their yard that even if they mowed that morning and saw a neibor mowing that afternoon did they go ahead and mow again just to be the most freshly mown lawn on the street? I have one neighbor down the road that doesn't understand Ozark yards. He is trying to have the perfectly flat manicured lawn. He's had it regraded every year and sod installed.

iris lilies

11-5-17, 9:12am

DH obtained one of those blowing devices free, as he does with many appliances. People leave them when they move, toss them in the alley, etc. Anyway, he has been using it on our patio for the past several years. Ugh. He blows the leaves into piles onto our lawn, and then mows them with a mulching mower.

But we still have plenty of leaves. I rake them and most years put them into the compost dumpsters. Last year I raked lots of leaves into the street for the street sweeper to pick up. Probably these do not go to the composting piles of the city, and that is too bad.

Tybee

11-5-17, 9:17am

My husband takes his pickup truck to town and actually collects bags of leaves which he adds to his extensive compost holdings.
Makes me crazy, but it seems like his heart is in the right place.

iris lilies

11-5-17, 9:23am

My husband takes his pickup truck to town and actually collects bags of leaves which he adds to his extensive compost holdings.
Makes me crazy, but it seems like his heart is in the right place.
Aw, that is nice, he is topping up his compost piles.

Compost is a beautiful thing.

CathyA

11-5-17, 9:45am

Sorry Pinkytoe! I have often wondered why people think lawns have to be so "perfect". To me, a "perfect" lawn is totally sterile (and probably full of chemicals).
I wonder what some of your neighbors' reactions would be if you explained your more natural philosophy to them?
I'm just glad we live too far out for any neighbor to even see our yard. DH was raised to have that "perfect" lawn and I constantly have to remind him to STOP IT!!

I've planted so many trees, and now we have tons of leaves. Yes, if you leave all of them, the grass dies......which is his concern. But I get so ticked off when he thinks he has to get every single leaf up. Don't people understand that when mulched, it actually feeds the grass?

In DH's defense, we do have too many leaves to deal with closer to the house. We've actually bought a big piece of equipment that you pull behind a mower and it shreds and sucks up all the leaves. Then we dump them in the compost pile..........great stuff! But it's still a lot of work and uses fossil fuels.

All I can say Pinkytoe is that I would suggest to talk to your neighbors about your approach to nature, and if they can't deal with it.......well, it's their problem. (But I'm talking as a person who actually loves weeds because they are so good for so many other species.) Good luck!

catherine

11-5-17, 10:08am

Compost is a beautiful thing.

+1

And, Cathy, I agree that the emerald green carpet look is not appealing to me. I was on MMM forum, and one guy was complaining about his neighbors who didn't fertilize their lawn and he said, "If people aren't going to take care of their lawns, they shouldn't own a house." Thankfully, there were several people who extolled the virtues of living with a few weeds and doing without chemical fertilizers.

ToomuchStuff

11-5-17, 10:25am

Some leaves mulch better then others, and it sucks when you have trees that don't much well, either uphill/wind from you as well as leaning over your yard from the downhill neighbor, over the fence. I lose grass every year due to being overwhelmed by them.

pinkytoe

11-5-17, 10:36am

I wonder what some of your neighbors' reactions would be if you explained your more natural philosophy to them?
Well...I have already figured out that these three particular men have very conservative values on many topics and it is apparent that any explanations would not matter to them. Their minds are closed. The funny thing is that they blow the leaves into the street and as it is very windy here, they just swirl around and come right back. Perhaps it is a sort of daily meditation for them. A time to zone out and escape their wives:)

CathyA

11-5-17, 11:11am

Pinkytoe........would a fence help to deal with the issue?

It's funny, I know DH loves living out here away from the maddening crowds (he gets plenty of them every day when he drives into the city to work).........but he just can't seem to shake his upbringing on how a lawn "should" look.
And he also (I'm pretty sure), loves getting on that mower and zoning out. He tells me he's only going to cut such and such an area, but I always find him acres away! It's like his brain goes on auto-pilot when he mows. And like you brought up......maybe it's a time for him to escape from his wife. :~)

iris lilies

11-5-17, 11:31am

I wonder what some of your neighbors' reactions would be if you explained your more natural philosophy to them?...

...All I can say Pinkytoe is that I would suggest to talk to your neighbors about your approach to nature...

Please save me from earnest neighbors who yack at me about their feel good actions to save the earth, save the children, save the brothers, save the whatevers. You know me, always cranky.

We just headed off a do~gooder who wants to gather up unpicked produce and distribute it to The Needy and she even worked out an elaborate system to make it attractive for us, community gardeners. Why wouldnt we jump on her fantastic idea from a random stranger who doesnt even live in our neighborhood? She doesn’t realize key issues, among them

1) there have been many many efforts to use extra vegetables in the community garden, none of them come to fruition for longer than 3 weeks
2) What she is proposing is actually stealing. It is stealing from our garden

But back to lawns: There is a good chance that the OP bought real estate in that neighborhood because it looked “nice.“ It looked well cared for. It looks like people who care about their property lived there. One obvious manifestation of that value is well tended lawns. Doesnt mean that aesthetic cant change, but this reminds me all too much of people who buy real estate in my neighborhood and then complain about historic design standards that keep it looking the way it looks.

Teacher Terry

11-5-17, 12:03pm

WE live in a high drought area. Many people are either using astro-turf or doing xeroscaping. WE used astro-turf for our dogs. We do need to pick up the leaves as it won't help fake grass. In the front yard we have no trees. However, our neighbors huge tree manages to blow all his leaves in our yard. It stops with us because we live in a 1950's ranch area but our house has a front porch added that stops the leaves from traveling. Ugh! I am really getting to hate that tree. We have 3 fruit trees in the back yard and do give away the fruit we don't use to anyone as it is wasteful to let it rot. OUr new puppy just loves the leaves. He loves to jump in them and bring them in the house. He is only 4 lbs so it is quite the sight.

SteveinMN

11-5-17, 12:20pm

For several months each year one of our neighbors replicates the leaf issue with snow. Doesn't matter how little fell or how hard it's falling at the moment; their driveway is C L E A N. Snowblowing followed by shoveling followed by the #&^% leaf blower for the drier snow. I guess everyone needs a hobby.

It's illegal here to burn leaves, but apparently not illegal to burn brush. >8) I think all of my neighbors have done it (so have I), in our little metal fireplace. It also is illegal to rake/blow leaves into the street because they clog the gutters and sewer grates and many of them in this neighborhood drain right to the Mississippi River. We wait for the city street-cleaning crew to show up halfway through leaf-falling season to sweep up what nature has provided. The remainder wait for the post-winter sweep. >8)

I am fortunate in that most of the neighbors in this area are far more into gardening than lawn-tending. That may be because most of us have just a city lot with not much of a front yard (if any). We also have a big tree that inhibits prolific grass. Which is good because I'm not the neighbor that loves a uniform, level, green monoculture of grass.

pinkytoe

11-5-17, 1:12pm

Yes, I guess manicured lawns spells tidy and safe when one is hunting real estate. However, the Edward Scissorhands look scares me. I have a lot of trees to contend with on our little lot - a 40 ft spruce, maples, pines, red oaks.

iris lilies

11-5-17, 1:15pm

bae

11-5-17, 1:23pm

The "lawn" at my beach house where my mother lives consists of native beach grasses, which are robust, need little water, and hold the beach together during storms. It looks great to me, and requires zero maintenance:

https://i.imgur.com/nbDwFPG.jpg

The neighbors on the several lots to the West of her all maintain urban-style lawns. Two of them are the two highest users of water in the village's water district from the amount of watering they do. (Though water is precious here, this being an island...). They also use huge quantities of pesticides and fertilizers on their lawn, even though right off that beach is a previously-pristine patch of eelgrass, which is crucial to the lifecycle of the local salmon, and is one of the prime local crabbing spots....

https://i.imgur.com/4lqegPU.jpg

Teacher Terry

11-5-17, 1:50pm

When we were in high school all our homes had lots of trees. So we bagged a bunch up and then went to our teacher's house (whom we liked and had a good sense of humor) that had one tiny stick of a tree in his front yard and surrounded it with all those leaves like it came from that little tree. I had forgotten about it until all this tree talk.

Tybee

11-5-17, 4:27pm

Beautiful photos of a beautiful beach. Those neighbors should not be allowed to pollute the water that way, imho.

Gardnr

11-5-17, 6:37pm

I have swept (not blown!) all the leaves off our driveway and patio into the compost pile and/or garden beds:cool:

But I swear in the fall, if I get in the hot tub someone WILL fire up a lawnmower or a leaf blower. Damn stupid things. They blow 'em away and the wind blows 'em back! Go figure.