Razing a lawn

It's always a wild card when I do an opener. It's either gonna be something that I don't understand, something I haven't read, and so on. This one is outdated, but I think still needs to be read. Title is, Erie Geller vows to not mess King Charles' coronation as it's Spoon he better not touch. If you're confused by this heading, then just listen because I'm gonna tell you all about why. He's worried about a Spoon.

Spoonbender extraordinaire let his fans in on one strange element of the coronation ceremony, but promises he won't try to mess with the priceless relic involved. Spoonbending paranormalist Erie Geller is very excited about the coronation of King Charles III as he vows not to mess with the proceedings. In a video filmed in his native Israel, the showman who claims he was gifted with paranormal powers by extraterrestrial visitors tells the story of the ancient golden Spoon.

Spoon has been used to pour holy oil onto every new British monarch since the 14th century. Even then, according to historical documents, it was already antique. Quote, you can see it here right on the screen. And quote, Geller says, re-quote, this nearly thousand year old gold Spoon will anoint him with oil, and the oil was made here in the Holy Land just three days ago. This was more than three days ago in real time. Then he jokes, that's one Spoon I better not touch.

The golden Spoon is first recorded in 1349 as preserved among St. Edward's regalia. In Westminster Abbey and Maywell have been used for his coronation in 1272, that's a year. Described as being an antique form even then in the time of the Black Death, is regarded as a remarkable relic. Wait, they can only find a Spoon that goes back to the 1300s? I feel like you can find way older Spoons if you really want. You probably could. I am unimpressed by this Spoon.

But this one's for anointing the kings and queens? And Chelsea, do you remember, does the name Eury Geller ring a bell for you? Yes. Okay, are we gonna bring it up or do we wanna do it now? That's why I chose this article. Okay, good. We'll talk about it at the end then. Okay, that's pretty much it. I'm not gonna go into, I mean, it's just gonna repeat itself. It actually goes on for a while, but I feel like that got its point to cut. We got the gist of the Spoon.

Yeah. And for those of you who are listening and who don't know, first off, why we're talking about a Spoon, we're actually talking about Eury Geller, I believe, more importantly, and of course, King Chuck, who had to take the Dick's Some Lord move of kicking his brother out to the curb. Oh, right. But more importantly, I thought that's what we were calling British Andy now. No, British Andy's the one who got kicked to the curb for he was not paying rent. I just assumed.

Cause he seems like that kind of guy, does he not? He sure does. Eury Geller was also on, what the freak was it? The remote viewing? Yeah, the remote viewing episodes. Project Stargate? Is that what it is? Oh God, I can't remember. Might have to listen to our episode. Yeah, I know. A lot of things happen between then and now. Yeah, so when I saw King Chuck and Eury Geller in one sentence, I was like, I got to read this for an opener. And hence, one of my infamous openers did we just receive.

And I think one of the things that I most importantly learned from this intro is that Eury Geller's still alive. He is still alive. And you have to see this video too. He's just like so eccentric as well. And he's just like, I only watched the first two seconds of it. And you know he's so eccentric. I like that. Yeah, you can tell. He seems like the type. Yeah, I mean, he has to sell that he's bending spoons and stuff like that. Do you think he's just trying to steal the spoon for himself?

Might be. He also, I don't really know what he's trying, is he trying to get more people to watch the anointing of King Charles or what? To see if he'll bend that spoon? Well, to be frank, I actually think it's not gonna get the ratings that people, I don't even know who would be thinking this, but the people think that it will be getting. I don't know that many people that are actually interested in the crown. No. Of course, I also thought that Avatar 2 wouldn't do all that well.

And by God, is it like the third highest grossing film of all time now? So what do I know? This had to have happened already. No, it hasn't happened yet. Oh, really? Yeah, I just saw some contentious thing about it. Well, that's right, with Harry's the one in Canada now, right? I don't think he's in Canada. Well, the one who's abandoned the royalty. Yeah, Harry. He's apparently going and it was a big deal and that came out this week, I believe, for last week.

Okay, well then I'm right on time with this news. Well, it depends. This comes out in like two months. True, true. Okay. Whatever then. So man, is it gonna be weird if it happens and Yuri Geller shows up and just like, bends that spoon right in half and runs away? Yeah. Then boy, were we on the right track. And Shaxet, I told you not to, shaking his fist to the sky. Okay, so that's my opener. Okay. Just a little bit of reading and then some banter. So now I'm ready for some episode.

Okay, perfect. Well, let's get to that.

Okay. From the unexplained to the mundane. Come join us on a journey to the fringe. Hello and welcome to journey to the fringe. Now look, I know neither of us want to be here. So let's sit through it, put in our time and move on with our day. We are your podcast hosts, Taylor and Chelsea. And today we take a look at one of these mundane fringy boys that you guys are always clamoring on about.

Today, of course, Chelsea, I'm gonna start this off with a question to you so that we can actually get into this topic. For those of you listening at home, just bearing through this, you probably know the answer to this question based on the title of the episode, but please refrain from answering for Chelsea or she is in the past. They have a foot up on me, it's not fair. Now, Chelsea, what would you say is the most irrigated crop in North America? Corn. That is a good guess. No, marijuana.

I would guess that marijuana is not irrigated, mostly because you don't want people knowing about it being there. Well, some people do in Canada, if you're in Canada. Yeah, fair. I feel like I got corn. I can't think of anything else you put me on the spot. Okay, yeah, that's fair. That's fair. And you actually came up with a good guess based on that. But corn is a distant second in this situation. The most irrigated crop in the US at least with 40 million irrigated acres in the US is grass.

It is our lawn. Well, that's messed up. Yeah, and actually, in fact, if you were to take all of the next three crops that are irrigated, that would be corn, soy, and orchards, it still far exceeds all the other crops. Lawn. Which is just so bizarre. And it doesn't even do anything. No, exactly. Just grass. Not only that, it makes up almost 2% of land use in North America. So if you're to throw just a dart randomly at a map of the US, there's a one in 50 chance that you hit lawn.

Okay, that's not that high. I mean, it's pretty high considering all of the things that are in the US. That's what I meant actually. It's pretty high. Yes, okay. I meant the opposite. To be fair, just to put a disclaimer on that stat, I just said, when it comes to irrigated, technically more corn is grown, there are 80 million acres of corn grown in 2018 in the US, but we're talking irrigated. Not all of that corn crop is irrigated. When we're talking just irrigated, it is by far lawns.

And if you're not including irrigation, I'm not actually sure I couldn't find a stat on that other than the 2% of land in the US is grass. Irrigated means watered. It has sprinkler systems. Okay, okay, good. I was thinking of the right thing. Just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page. Today's episode is on lawns, just all about them. We're gonna go through the history.

We're gonna talk about how there's such a horrible, ghastly thing and maybe if there's enough time at the end, we'll talk about how to fix it. I'm down for that. Okay, without further ado, let's get into this. So Chelsea, if you were to place a guess on how far back we can go in history for lawns, how far back do you think they'd go? I wouldn't think that far, if I was being honest. I would think probably back to maybe the 40s or 50s.

Okay, not a bad guess specifically with how we define lawns today. I think you're gonna be surprised actually. The first lawn came about in 1993 when Jerry Seinfeld installed one to bring advertisement towards the show Seinfeld. That of course is not true. It goes back much further, but it was a fun fact to say. And I'm not asking. Yeah, I was like, I feel like this is a rate because I've been alive longer than lawn. You have been alive longer than lawns.

No, the first lawn actually, it's hard to say how far back lawns go because this whole concept kind of predates the word lawn. Basically when we moved into a feudal system and started raising cattle on the outskirts of the castles, there was a grassy area for them to graze off of. Is that really a lawn? Well, it's kind of hard to say. They may originate as grass enclosures within early medieval settlements used for communal grazing of livestock as distinct from fields reserved for agriculture.

The word lawn apparently comes from about 1540 from the old French L-A-N-D-E, which I'm going to take a stab at as landais. I highly doubt that's how it's said, but let's face it, French isn't a real language. It's so not. Which is a word used to describe heath, more barren land or clearings. Lawns actually become popular a little bit after this with the aristocracy in Northern Europe from the Middle Ages onwards.

In medieval Europe, open expanses of low grasses became valued among the aristocracy because they allowed those inside an enclosed fencer castle to view those approaching. Which you can see why that would be a good thing. You would want a bit of a clearing around your castle so you can just, you know, kind of take a peek around. And see if there's anyone hiding out there. Yes, or you know, see if the trees are encroaching on your castle so as they can foretell your doom as we see in Macbeth.

Exactly. The early lawns were not always distinguishable at all from pasture lands. And that's why I say it's kind of hard to say where they actually come into place. Because pasture lands clearly predate lawns. It's just when you would actually define it as a lawn. Yes, I was not thinking pasture lawn when I made my guess. Okay, that's fair and that's why it is a weird thing to say.

And I also say like Northern Europe because the damp climate of Maritime Western and Northern Europe is what really made lawns possible to grow and manage. And really this is where most grasses that you see today come from is these regions. What? That's weird. Yeah. By the 1700s they have evolved into a form of conspicuous consumption. Which is to say that by having land which could raise food but you instead use for decoration you were demonstrating your wealth.

Lawns were deliberately cultivated by wealthies in both France and England. Though they were more likely planted with more than just grass at the time. So what you would actually see as lawn would also include things like camel meal, thyme, clover, dandelions, things like that. Just you know, shorter things that weren't necessarily a crop per se. Dandelions, no. Surprisingly what I usually thought of is just a normal part of a lawn for a long time. A beautiful flower.

And intentionally brought to North America. What? Oh yeah. I mean we see these on lawns today still. A beautiful part of everybody's lawns. Yes. In the early 18th century landscape gardening for the aristocracy entered its what's considered golden age. And Chelsea what we're really describing here when we say golden age. Whenever you think of like those English mansions or English estates and castles. You just picture like there might be one or two trees. You might see like a babbling brook.

And a few shrubs or shrubbery I guess is a better way to say it. Okay, I'm following, yeah. Yeah, you know for the knights who say need. Well what does it want? We want a shrubbery. A shrubbery. Anyhow, this is where this idea comes from is this era. This all came under the direction of a few gardeners. It's William Kent and probably the like biggest name that we've ever said on this show. Not based on like the infamir famousness. Just Chelsea prepare yourself for this name.

Lancelot capability Brown. What capability as a middle name. It's quotation marked. So I think that was his nickname, but what the fuck? Capability is quotation. Yeah. You never know that could be his given birth name. Yeah. Capability and quotate. I didn't know you could quotation the name. You probably could actually. Now that I think about it. I think about that. Yeah. That is some name. I'm also impressed that there are specific gardeners that this goes back to.

Yeah. The rich people love their gardeners, especially right around this time. Tip for all those listening and myself for the future. I need to make note of this great fact for dinner party. He's great. I'm reshaping this. And by the way, I am not shorting this for the rest of this episode when it comes back to it. It will be Lancelot capability. And then maybe I include that last name of breath. Because just you can't shorten that. Love it.

OK. So anyhow, Lancelot capability Brown and this other dumb guy who I can't even remember his name anymore because he wasn't named Lancelot capability Brown refined the English landscape garden style with designs of natural or quote romantic and quote estate settings for wealthy Englishmen. Lancelot capability are remembered as England's greatest gardener designed over 170 parks, many of which still endure.

His influence was so great that the contributions to the English garden made his predecessors, Charles Bridgeman and William Kent often overlooked mostly due to their names as well. We're just going to we need to include that. It would have to agree 100%. His work still endures at Kroom Court, Blenheim Palace, Warwick Castle, Harwood House, Bowwood House, Milton Abbey and in traces at Q gardens and many other locations in the UK.

His style of smooth undulating lawns which ran seamlessly to the house in Meadow, plumps, belts and scatterings of trees and his serpentine lakes formed by invisibly damning small rivers or a new style within the English landscape, a garden less form of landscape gardening, which swept away almost all the remnants of previous formerly pattern styles.

His landscapes were fundamentally different from what they replaced and the well known formal guards of England, which were criticized by Alexander Pope and others from the 1710s. Now that is a history you can really appreciate. That really is. And you know some guy who spent way too many years at Cambridge University wrote that sentence. That came right from Wikipedia. You know that. Oh, that's for sure like an art history class. Seriously, you think like 301 or something.

Oh yeah. Dude, Cambridge Maristocracy never had to worry about wealth and day in his life. So he was able to come up with that sentence over the course of three to six months. And wow, everybody's yard looked like shit before this, before Lancelot capability. What a guy. Yeah, Lancelot capability. You've really fixed the fact that everything was natural and now you just made it grass. Incredible. What a time to be alive. What a time to be alive.

From there, the open and this is called the English style. Thank you for that. It should have been called the Lancelot capability style. It really should have. But let's just keep going on with this. Of Parkland first spread across Britain and Ireland and then across Europe, such as the Garden à la France. Being replaced by the French landscape guard.

And by this time, the word quote, lawn and quote, in England had semantically shifted to describe a piece of a garden covered with grass and closely mown. Wealthy families in America during the late 18th century also began mimicking this English landscaping style. And Chelsea, I just need to say it at this point because we're talking about mown grass or mowed lawns. What do you think that entails at the time? We bring in the cows in to eat the grass.

That actually is at one very useful way of doing it. It's usually sheep they bring in. I was just going to say sheep, maybe. Cows bring in unsightly other parts when they are cutting the grass. Whereas sheep also do that. Sheep dropped a little pellets. Oh, OK. Another good guess. I'm going to roll tonight. You are. But actually, if you were aristocracy, how you would maintain your lawns in the day would be with sites.

Oh. The Grim Reaper, in fact, would be someone you could call on to end the life of your too tall of grass so that their short and brethren can take over. OK. This would take absolute teams of people who might be able, a team of five, might be able to cover like an acre a day. Would that even work? Chelsea, if you could go to YouTube, you could type in siphon a lawn and you can see people doing this. Oh, I'm watching it. I was way ahead of you because I'm not understanding how it could happen.

You would think you'd need some sort of scissors or something. You would. But apparently, it's just a really fucking sharp scythe. This is like something I would never be interested in. I think you need to get the lawn particularly tall as well. Because if you see them cutting it, it leaves behind like hay-length stuff. It does. And it looks like a lot of work. Now I'm just wondering how it came from this to be associated with the Grim Reaper.

I mean, it could be because it looks like a lot of work. We probably cover that in another episode at some time. Fuck, I wish I was dead. This sucks. Or they just keeled over. Never interested in doing that in my life for the record. No, God, no. That's awful. Anyhow, the aristocracy of its day from North America sees these fancy people in Europe with their fanciful lawns and their fanciful sides and all this shit going on.

And one of them being Thomas Jefferson, he decides that he actually wants to do a lawn in his yard in Monticello in 1806. So he really brings this idea over to North America. But that's just a little skip there. We're going to come back to that idea to try to emulate it. However, it should be noted that these were just the upper echelons of society who are maintaining lawns. That's all it is. Although it was pretty much just grass, it generally also had other things in it.

Dandelions, clovers, times, camomile. There was some makings of pesticides in its day. It was pretty much just salt and acid. Oh, that sounds good. And people would be using hundreds of pounds of salt per acre to get rid of unsightly parts of their lawn. It's really bad. And the meals sound nice to grow in grass, though, and clothe. Oh, yeah, it does. All of it actually sounds pretty nice. All of it soft on the foot. And importantly, useful. All of it is useful. That does sound very nice.

From there, we're going to move back in time a little bit. And we're going to look at North America now. Prior to European colonization, the grasses of the East Coast of North America were mostly broom straw, wild rye, and marsh grass. As Europeans moved into the region, it was noted by colonists in New England, more than others, that the grasses of the New World were inferior to those of England, and that their livestock sieved to receive less nutrition from it.

In fact, once livestock brought overseas from Europe, spread throughout the colonies, much of the native grasses of New England disappeared. And in the inventory list from the 17th century, noted supplies of clover and grass seed from England. New colonists were even urged by their country and companies to bring grass seed with them to North America. By the late 17th century, a new market in imported grass seed had begun in New England.

Much of these new grasses brought by Europeans spread quickly and effectively, often ahead of the colonists. One such species, Bermuda grass, became the most important pasture grass for the southern colonies. And Kentucky bluegrass is a grass native to Europe or the Middle East. It was likely carried to Midwestern United States in the early 1600s by French missionaries and spread via the waterways to the regions around Kentucky, where it got its name from.

Like I said, these grasses that you consider on lawns, none of them are native to North America. They all come from Europe, just named differently than you'd expect. Like Bermuda grass, you'd think Bermuda, nope, Europe. That's super weird. Kentucky bluegrass, the one that most people think of for grass, nope, Europe. Not Kentucky at all.

And I do just want to add at this point too, they're surprised that they brought these animals that have evolved or at least been husband-dreed to a point to survive off particular plants that exist in Europe. And then they brought them to North America and were surprised when they couldn't sustain themselves on the things that were there. Makes sense. So they said, oh fuck, I guess we gotta bring this stuff in. That's more or less how it goes for a long time.

It's just kind of slowly propagates across North America because people brought that in. In a lot of places like in the South you would have your plantations. They happen to have what I can very uncomfortably call a workforce going on around their plantations. So they have the means of siding their lawns down to a particular height. In the North, you have some rich people so it slowly picks up. But really what makes it take off in North America is the invention of the lawnmower.

Which Chelsea, do you want to take a stab at the year it was invented? 1940, 30, 40. 1837. What? Oh, hold on, hold on. Before I'm thinking of a riding. You're thinking of the wrong kind. Okay, so I go with what you said. Okay, good. And the guy who invented it, he worked at a carpet manufacturing facility. They had this thing that was used at the very end when they finished making the carpets. They ran this thing over to make sure all the carpet strands were evenly lengthed.

And he said, hey, you know what's like a carpet is green stuff outside. I bet you could use this same tool out on the grass. And he kind of just takes this machine, adds wheels to the side, a few gears to make the middle spin faster than the outside. And he says, there we go, we got a lawnmower. And invention. I don't think he called it that at the time, but that's what happened. This thing absolutely takes off in North America in the 1860s. I would assume so.

Nobody wants to use fucking size anymore. 1860s most importantly, Chelsea, is post-Civil War. So labor isn't as cheap as it used to be. Yes, also correct. And also around this time, there was an increasing popularity of sports in the mid-Victorian period. The lawnmower was used to craft modern style sporting ovals, playing fields, pitches, grass courts for the nation, sports of football, lawnmowing, lawn tennis, and golf.

The rise of suburbanization in the interwar period was heavily influenced by the Garden City movement of Ebenezer Howard in the creation of the first garden suburbs at the start of the 20th century. The garden suburb developed through the efforts of social reformer Henrietta Barnett, and her husband exemplified the incorporation of the well-manicured lawn in the suburban lifestyle. Lawns began to proliferate in America from the 1870s onwards as more plants were introduced from Europe.

Lawns became smaller as they were filled with flower beds, perennial sculptures, and water features. Eventually, the wealthy began to move away from the cities and into the suburbs of their own volition because it got a little too industry in the cities. And it was a little gross, pollution-wise, and the trains kind of started to expand, so suburbs actually became viable. So this is also kind of what lawns take off as well. There's so many points in history in which lawns take off.

There's just always a little tick up. Always a little tick up. There's always so much more potential for it. In 1856, an architectural book was published to accompany the development of the new suburbia that placed importance on the availability of a grassy space for children to play and a space to grow fruits and vegetables that further imbued the lawn with cultural importance.

Lawns began making more appearances at development plans, magazine articles, and catalogs, and the lawn became less associated with being a status symbol instead of giving way to a landscape of aesthetics. And this is really, if you're gonna look at one point in time where you say this is where the modern day lawn comes from, it is post-World War II. So 1940s, Chelsea, you are bang on.

After World War II, people come home with their pensions from World War II, and a lot of people are looking for homes, and there is a baby boom, so people want houses. The company Levitt & Co. grates a town outside of New York called Levitt Town. Sorry, Levitt & Sons, that's the name of the company. A company by the name of Levitt & Sons. I thought that was the name of the company. Oh no. No, Levitt Town is the name of the town. Levitt & Sons is the name of the company.

So Levitt & Sons buys up 1,000 acres of potato farms on Long Island just outside of New York, and what they do is they plan to build 6,000 low-priced homes, making it much larger than any other U.S. development to that point. On July 1st, 1947, Levitt & Sons broke ground on the $50 million development of Levitt Town, which ultimately included 17,000 homes on 7.3 square miles of land. In today's price, that's $607 million for that area of land.

There were two kind of people involved, Alfred and Abraham, they're the Levitts. Alfred created the mass production techniques used in design the homes and the layout of the development with its curving streets. Abraham directed the landscaping, whose focus was two trees to each front yard, all planted exactly the same distance apart, and William was the financier and promoter, and sorry, there's three Levitts, not two. He created lawmakers to rewrite the laws that made Levitt Town possible.

The houses, which were in the Cape Cod and Rancho style, sat on a seventh of an acre lot, and they had 750 square feet houses with two bedrooms, a living room with a television, and a kitchen with modern appliances, an unfinished second floor and no garage. This is super weird, they're just making the neighborhood look exactly the same like they want it. Yeah, they kind of take the assembly line, mass production style, and they put it to housing.

I believe they had like a 27 step technique for building a house, and they just mass produced these things. And Abraham Levitt also wrote this to kind of describe it, no single feature of a suburban residential community contributes as much to the charm and beauty of the individual home and the locality as a well kept lawn, end quote. Landscaping was one of the most important factors in Levitt Town's success, and no feature was more prominent than the lawn.

The Levitts understood that landscaping could add to the appeal of their development, and claimed that quote, increase in values are most often found in neighborhoods where lawns show as green carpets, end quote, and that for over the years, quote, lawns, trees, and shrubs become more valuable, both aesthetically and monetarily, end quote. As well as symbol of the American dream, Levitt Town would also become a symbol of racial segregation. Right, sorry, I meant to say this.

Lawns are also kind of racist, at least from where they come from, because Levitt Town had a clause in their standard lease agreement that specifically said in bold type that the house could not be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race. Oh my God, that's horrifying. Such discriminatory housing standards were consistent with government policies at the time. The Federal Housing Administration allowed developers to justify segregation with public housing.

The FHA only offered mortgages to non-mixed developments, which discouraged developers from creating racially integrated housing. And before the sale of Levitt Town homes began, the sales agents were aware that no applications from black families would be accepted. As a result, American veterans who wished to purchase a home in Levitt Town were unable to do so if they were black.

William Levitt justified their decision to only sell homes to white families by saying that it was in the best interest of the business. He claimed their actions were not discriminatory, but intended to maintain the value of their property. Oh my God. The company explained that it was not possible to reduce racial segregation while they were attempting to reduce the housing shortage. So yeah, that's fun.

Basically, whenever you're going back to pre-1960s, you're gonna find something deeply racist. Unfortunately, yes. Hey, has its roots in basically our modern world? So look at that. Yep. Now, that's where the idea of the American dream lawn comes from. It's the two trees in the front yard, the green lawn, the white picket fence. That's where Levitt Town is what that's based off of. Levitt Town, white people. Yeah, white people like the picket fences really just all works together. Really?

What did you really do? They really matched well. Yeah. Also, after World War II, a surplus of synthetic nitrogen in the United States led to chemical firms such as DuPont seeking to expand the market for fertilizer. The suburban lawns offered an opportunity to market fertilizer previously only used by farmers to homeowners. In 1955, DuPont released Uramite, a slow-release nitrogen fertilizer specifically marketed for lawns.

The trend continued throughout the 1960s with chemical firms such as DuPont and Monsanto utilizing television advertising and other forms of advertisement to market pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides. The environmental impact of this widespread chemicals use were noticed as early as the 1960s, but suburban lawns as a source of pollution were largely ignored.

Also, during this time, it is discovered that, well, clover is always been a part of the lawn, and it actually has a really useful trait in that it takes nitrogen from the air and deposits into the earth where your grass can use it. It was usually accepted or even encouraged as part of a lawn until the early 50s. It only acquired weed status because the earliest broadleaf 2,4-D herbicide killed it off along with dandelions.

So the first dandelion pesticide also killed clovers, so they marketed clovers as a weed that also needed to be cotton rid of. Of course they did. And that's really where the monoculture grass really starts to take root as right around that time with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers being introduced. And that's the history of lawns, Chelsea. It continues on, but I think that's enough, mostly because we've been talking for 40 minutes almost now, and there's a lot more to talk about.

That's very interesting, and there are some surprising things and factors in there. But overall, I think it just really, that's the word I'm looking for. It meanders forward? It took a meander in the direction I thought it would, where it ended up. Well, and it's just incremental changes. Like I always say, this is a big uptick. It's incremental increase.

Yeah, it's just improving on what they had, leading up to, and I think of the white picket fence in the 40s and 50s after the war, is where I saw it coming, because that's where everyone's owning a home, having a family, there's a baby boom and everything then. Yeah, let's just everywhere. Yeah, now you have like strata's and homeowner associations that monitor these things and still want everything to look uniform on the lawn and stuff like that.

Yeah, and I just need to say this now, the HOA portion of this episode, the Homeowners Association, I'm not gonna get into. That could probably be its own episode in itself, because they heavily lead to a lot of the issues that we're gonna talk about coming up now, but unfortunately, it's gonna be a long episode, so I already have to like pick what I'm gonna talk about. Okay. So the first thing I wanna start off with, Chelsea, what would you define a weed as? An invasive species?

And I think that's what people kind of want you to believe a weed is. Sometimes it can technically be correct. It really depends on what you mean by an invasive species too, because. And invasive, I'm meaning what I would think a weed to be, something that you don't want, that is going to kill healthy things. But I feel like what is referred to as weeds is just something that's not aesthetically pleasing. Aesthetically pleasing are just not intended to grow in the spot that it is growing.

Yeah. I think that's the fairest way to put it. What it actually is, for the most part, what you have in your front yard when you look at a lawn is a devastated ecosystem. Okay, that makes sense. Basically, if mother nature were to look at your front yard and a forest that has just been destroyed by a forest fire, it's gonna see little difference. That grass that is growing there is not natural, nor should it actually be occurring there.

And none of the natural parts of the ecosystem exists there. So if you actually were to look at a cycle of an ecosystem from devastation back to a climax ecosystem, so basically, after you have a fire, the first things that are gonna come back are called pioneer species. They're small, they withstand a lot of harsh treatment. They don't live that long, and they treat the soil so that it can actually be used by the next species, which are called intermediate species and climax communities.

Pioneer species are basically everything that grows in your yard that you don't want it to. It is trying to turn your yard back just into nature. Oh. Most weeds are pioneer plant species that have evolved various traits that adapt them to thrive and reproduce successfully in the recently disturbed habitats.

Each kind of disturbance presents certain stresses, whether it be temperature extremes, exposed subsoil, poor retention of moisture, or in the case of agriculture, the likelihood of frequent habitat disruption, and certain opportunities, such as the removal of shade and competing vegetation, release the soluble plant nutrients, things like that. And weeds are plants that have evolved mechanisms to cope with stresses and exploit the opportunities of disturbance.

They are trying to make the ecosystem more natural. That's very sad. Yeah. That's also why, Chelsea, when you think of the weeds that you might see in a yard, like particularly dandelions, if you're out on a hike, do you see dandelions? No. Because eventually pioneer species are pushed out for a climax ecosystem. Once it's like established. Exactly, yes. Or just there to help the big guys out.

They're there to reset the situation so that they can reestablish a climax community within the ecosystem. They fix themselves, eventually. If we let them, yeah, they'll just fix themselves. It takes a long time. A climax community likely takes about 100 to 150 years to establish, but it will. Also, with that, this is just going to be very straightforward. Lawns reduce biodiversity. Shocking, hey? Once I process that sentence, not shocking at all. Especially when lawn covers a large area.

Fish and all lawn often replace plant species that feed pollinators requiring bees, butterflies, to cross waste plants to reach food and host plants. Yeah. I've been talking about like the, sorry, we as a podcast have not, but it's kind of been in the zeitgeist of society for some time now that there is a huge problem with pollinators, particularly bees. This is part of the problem. Is they're flying over yards and yards and yards that are just for all intents and purposes, sand below them.

They offer them nothing. That was so sad. Lawns promote homogenization and are normally cleared of unwanted plants and animal species, typically with synthetic pesticides, which can also kill unintended target species. We'll talk about that later. They may be composed of introduced species, not native to the area, particularly in the United States. This can produce a habitat that supports a reduced number of wildlife species, which it just does.

And I think anybody anecdotally can just say there are not as many bugs as there used to be out there either. Wildlife has had it hard, particularly in these areas. Yeah, I would believe it. We've gone on road trips before. Do you feel there are as many bugs on windshields as there used to be? You know, I can't say that I've ever kept track or noticed, but I'm gonna go with no, actually. And that's just based on recollection.

Well, I remember, because we went on road trips together, when you get gas, you had to stop and wipe your windshield clean of bugs. Klugea. Yes. They literally never do that. Which we don't have to anymore. Oh, I don't have to. It's true. I never noticed. So we are killing an ecosystem and we're making sure that it dies by not letting the natural parts come back. Hmm, not good.

Chelsea, if you had to guess, and I don't want you guessing outlandishly, I want your real answers for these, just because it... It's all been real answers today. I know, I know. That's good. Very accurate. We treat water for human consumption. What percentage of that do you think is used for lawns, for grass? It's gonna be higher than I would think it would be. But what do you think it would be? What would you hope it is?

I'm gonna go... I would hope it would be like 1%, or like nothing, because like why? I'm gonna go with like 25. Okay, irrigation makes up anywhere from 50% to 70% of all residential water use in the United States. What? Just for landscaping. And sorry, I shouldn't have said irrigation, it's just for landscaping. 50% to 70% of all residential water in the United States is used for landscaping. Irrigated lawns take up nearly three times as much space as irrigated corn.

And to maintain that amount of grass on a daily basis, nine billion gallons of water is needed to be allocated to our lawn. Oh my God, that is a crazy amount. Yeah. That's really bad. And particularly in places like deserts where grass shouldn't fucking grow. Yeah. Where they have decided to put golf courses and lawns and everything, and just know. And they make sand look nice? You can make sand look nice. You could, you can make like nice designs on it.

Yeah. Like rake it all nice, like those meditation thingies, put some nice rocks. And like I've seen so many different like estimations, none of them drop below 30% of water consumption. So the EPA estimates that about a third of all public water is used to water grass with most municipalities using anywhere from 30 to 60% of drinkable water on lawn. And if you're in an area without substantial rainfall, you likely need to take water stored into pleading aquifers to maintain the grass.

As droughts increase around the world, this creates further strains on precious resources, particularly in the more arid regions of the world, Arizona, Nevada, California. Their aquifers are in rough shape and they still have their lawns. Yeah. California, especially you hear about their droughts every year. And people like to blame the almonds for that, but everybody has watered their lawn off the Colorado River prior to it getting to California. So don't start with the almonds.

Like there are so many more things that we could fix with that. Nobody's even brought up almonds until this point. Well, I've heard it brought up, but that's... On this plug, yeah. Apparently I have different conversations. Corn was brought up, not almond. Yes, not in this episode. Yes. Next up, like this is just an insane number. I couldn't find the exact numbers, but several people quoted it. The US spends over $100 billion a year on lawn care. Like that just, to me, sounds insane.

And that's everything from the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertilizer, to the mowing, to the irrigation, to the begging of leaves, which we'll get into eventually, to everything about it. But we're gonna focus here on the lawn equipment. So lawn equipment mostly is gasoline power, typically being of one of two types, two stroke or four stroke engines. If it's handheld, it's most definitely a two stroke engine. If it's a little bigger, it's probably four stroke.

To fuel this equipment, it takes about 800 million gallons of gasoline annually. Two stroke engines also pose a unique environmental hazard because they don't have an independent lubricant system. So fuel and oil are mixed together. Usually when you see like machine gas labeled in somebody's shack, that's what it has. It's oil and gas mixed together. So when you do this, 30% of the fuel won't combust completely. 30% of your emissions is just straight up what you put in it.

Okay. Thus releasing toxic gases into the air. A 2014 study examined a combination of the harmful gases that are emitted by two stroke engines. And it was found that the level of emissions were 124 times higher from an idling scooter than from a car or a truck. Four stroke engines are also used in some equipment. And while they are slightly more environmentally efficient, in total, they are also very harmful.

A four stroke lawnmower operating for one hour equates to a vehicle traveling about 500 miles. Oh my God. Just so many surprising things. And according to one study done by quiet communities, this equipment was responsible for 26.7 million tons of pollutants in 2011 alone. Furthermore, in the same year, another study demonstrated that a consumer grade leaf blower releases more hydrocarbons than a pickup truck or sedan. What percentage of like total emissions for air pollution in the US?

What percent do you think is lawnmowers? 40. Okay. Not quite there. It's actually a hundred percent, but I can see how you would get that. It's five percent. Five percent. Which is actually ridiculously high. If you were to ask a random hydrocarbon in the air where it came from, there's a one in 20 chance it was a lawnmower. I prefer not to ask them though at that point. No. And they're kind of jerks. They only talk to certain people. Yeah, they are. They're assholes.

And this is a sobering warning from the California Air Resource Board in 2017. They reported the following. By 2020 gas leaf blowers, lawnmowers and similar equipment in the state could produce more ozone pollution than all the millions of cars in California combined. And this came from a study out of Nashville. A hectare of lawn in Nashville, Tennessee, produces greenhouse gases equivalent to 697 to 2443 kilograms of carbon dioxide a year.

The higher figure is equivalent to a flight more than halfway around the world. And lawnmowing is one element of the lawn culture that causes a great amount of the submissions. So just owning a lawn could be the equivalent of taking a flight annually around the world. It's pretty crazy. Just for your carbon footprint. And most people would never break it down like this. It's just like embedded in our head that we must have a nice lawn. It sure is.

And then this is just from the actual use of the product. You actually have to put gas in these products. And refilling gas powered lawnmowers, leaf blowers and other garden equipment is a messy business that can easily lead to fuel spills. It is estimated that nearly 64 million liters or 17 million gallons of gasoline are spilled each summer while refueling garden and lawn care equipment in the United States.

That equates to 50% more than the oil that was spilled during the Exxon Valdez incident or one-tenth of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Wow. So every 10 years there's a Deepwater Horizon oil spill that just happens from us trying to hook up the Jere can't write. And that's just that. Imagine how many other things we don't know about are going on contributing to that. Exactly. And this spilt fuel can get into your lawn, garden beds, groundwater, nearby ponds and so forth.

And some of the oil evaporates in the air. It's volatile organic compounds. Not exactly great for the environment or your lungs. So yeah. Now, lawn maintenance also generally includes fertilizer and synthetic pesticides, which can cause great harm. Some are carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. They may permanently in the environment and negatively affect the health of potentially all nearby organisms.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency estimated in 2012 that 32 million kilograms of active pesticide ingredients are used on suburban lawns each year in the United States. There are indications of an emerging regulatory response to this issue. For example, in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Kuwait, and Belize, they have placed restrictions on the use of many herbicides, including that 2-4D, which we talked about for clovers.

The University of Massachusetts reports that the typical lawn service company in that state alone applies five to seven pounds of pesticides per acre of lawn per year. Per EPA records, this is at least twice the amount applied to the most pest plagued of agricultural crops, sweet corn. That is staggering and terrifying.

And because lawns serve as a primary space for our kids and pets to play, 14 of the 30 most commonly used lawn pesticides are neurotoxins that are known or suspected to be carcinogens. And two thirds of them may cause reproductive harm in humans. Not to mention the fact that many of the chemicals we dump on our lawns are herbicides meant to kill weeds, which we talked about earlier, what exactly is a weed, that potentially also may offer benefits itself.

Studies show that hazardous lawn chemicals are drifting into our homes when we're doing this, as they are contaminating the indoor air and surfaces exposing children to levels 10 times higher than pre-application levels. Of the 40 most commonly used lawn pesticides, 26 are linked to cancer, archarcinogenity, carcinogenicity, that is really hard to say.

12 are linked to birth defects, 21 with reproductive defects, 32 with liver or kidney damage, 24 with neurotoxicity, and 24 with disruption of the endocrine or hormonal system. Of these same 40 lawn pesticides, 21 are detected in groundwater, 24 have the ability to leach in drinking water resources, 39 are toxic to fish, and other aquatic organisms vital to the ecosystem, 33 are toxic to bees, 18 are toxic to mammals, and 28 are toxic to birds.

And by the first decade of the 21st century, American homeowners were using 10 times more pesticides per acre than farmers, poisoning an estimated 60 to 70 million birds every year. But worth it for a nice lawn, right? Am I right? But we gotta have that green lawn, which is not an ecosystem in any way. Yeah, we need it to be sterile, and that goes for all the humans living around it as well. That's just like our pee. The lawn should be like the pee, sterile and nothing can live in it. Exactly.

Drinkable, if you will. So yeah, lawns are fucked, and everything we do to them to keep away this thing that is actually like really good for the environment, keeps every, the ecosystem in check. We're trying to absolutely fucking, we may not know it, but we are. I was just gonna point out that exact thing. It's such a mundane thing that's part of, or everyday life. Yeah, it's part of modernity. You see lawns everywhere, and you're like, wow, that's a nice lawn.

Look at how well they take, not even thinking, like, wow. It's killed an entire ecosystem. Well, and that's something we've actually been culturally trained to think. And this came up actually, it's in the lawn wiki about like the social implications, about how a yellow patch in your yard can show that you are not an upstanding citizen, and how it is important to maintain that perfectly green yard.

And some people have taken that to the extreme and completely ripped out grass and put in that synthetic green shit. Yep, now you see those two as well. Because that's the implications, is that the socially correct thing is they have a perfectly green plot of carpet. Whether or not it's actually alive doesn't matter at this point. Yeah, crazy. You should know when I'm saying the word lawn, I'm not just talking about that 10 by 20 foot plot of land in front of your house.

I am also talking about the sides of the roads. I am talking about the meridians in the middle of the roads. I am talking about the parks that we play in, the football fields that you throw the ball in, and the golf courses you pitch and put in. This applies to all of them, and they all fall under these same issues. Anything that's maintained, right? Yeah, also, I didn't put it in my notes, but I should just briefly bring it up.

Some people will say that at least lawns act as a carbon sink in that they will absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and put it into their systems to grow. It's a stretch, you're reaching. Well, not only that, it's a lie outside of very particular regions, because that is only grass growing in its ideal environment.

When it's not growing in perfectly pristine growing conditions, perfect amount of rain, perfect amount of sun, it acts as a carbon deficit and it even allows the ground to absorb more sunlight. So it actually leads to more global warming. And if you're going to give it its ideal situation, then guess what? You're irrigating it, you're fertilizing it, and you're cutting it, or at least adding all these carbons that are clearly offset. Any sort of carbon footprint that it might be reducing.

And another thing I just didn't mention, I should have put it in my notes, but I didn't. Keeping it green is ideal for a lot of people's minds, which actually includes leaves. When the leaves fall from the trees, you have to beg them up and send them off to wherever they end up going. Oh yeah, I've heard. Usually the dump, hopefully a compost area.

First and foremost, that is trees leaching nutrients from deep down in the soil and putting it back into a higher level of the soil by dropping the leaves. By taking those leaves away from it, you are destroying the nutrition of that ground, which fertilizer is not going to fix on itself. Next up, the entire area below decaying leaves is an ecosystem in itself that many feces rely on for a part of their life cycle. By destroying that area, you are destroying an ecosystem again.

So it's just something I had to add there. I forgot, it didn't kind of. I actually heard that. I can't remember where I've heard that recently, but someone saying just leave your leaves. Like it's not that big of a deal. Yeah, just leave them. And actually, this is the one where the solution, although I am fully leaving out the HOA side of this as I talked about earlier, the solution is to be as lazy as possible. You know the best solution for the issues I just talked about?

Rewilding your yard, which yeah, you can actually go out and grab plants that live in your area and plant them, or you can just fuck off and let nature take its course. People will get pissed off with you, but that is actually the best solution is just let nature take its course. Chelsea, I don't know. Have you ever taken a walk in a drought? Maybe, depends on what you're getting at. I live in a desert. So we're constantly in like drought conditions near the end of the summer.

If you walk in areas that are not maintained, they are lush and green and beautiful because they know how to withstand the environment. If we just stopped watering or just let nature take its course, you will get some beautiful plants growing. Sure, they might be weeds at first, but it helps the ecosystem. I've also seen people asking when they're like building homes as well. Actually, I can't remember the instance in which they're asking about what's better than just the standard looking grass.

Like someone was asking about cloves and just even just planting wildflowers to go instead of having to maintain the lawn and what's better for the environment. And that's actually the first time I thought there's something else other than just having a nice lawn. Exactly, yeah. And the answer to that, what's better? If you actually want to take active steps, what's better than grass in your yard is going to vary greatly from environment to environment if you wanted to take proactive steps.

Probably just leave it there. So talk to your local garden groups or greenhouses about what's natural or what would work if you wish to actually pursue an active effort into rewilding or a more natural yard. That's cool. Think about that next time you see not a lawn that's not mowed. Mowed? Yeah, exactly. And then something just came to mind when you're talking about that. Chelsea, do you remember the Levittown, how they had those two trees in the front yard that they were freshly planted?

That is absolutely a part of development. The reason they do that is because they can clear away the entire land and they put in new trees when they finish that so that they don't have to worry about working around trees or things that are big or a nuisance in yards. That's nice of them. So when they're building a larger development scale, they just clear everything and then they put in those two small trees.

And generally those trees have been bred to be only male so that they do not create seedlings that will leave unsightly growths in your yard. Yeah, that makes sense. As a developer, of course. Yeah, and not wanting to worry about nature, just the bottom line. Oh yeah, nature can fuck off. Yeah, if you can't be too lazy, if we can't say just sit on your ass and do nothing, you say, but that does seem so hard.

Well, probably the best thing you can do is stop spraying anything because those chemicals, I think are worse than the CO2 you're putting into the atmosphere. So just don't spray anything or talk to your local city council or local regional government about what's actually banned and see if they can look into banning more because there honestly are pesticides probably in your neighborhood that are absolutely terrible for the environment. I wouldn't doubt that.

If you can't be bothered that, then just leave the leaves alone and maybe mow a little bit less. The issue with regular mowing is that it favors grasses which grow from the bases of the plant and low growing species such as dandelion and clovers.

Other species that have their growing tips or flowering stems regularly removed by mowing can't compete allowing plant diversity in urban lawns to increase has the knock on effect of increasing diversity of other organisms such as pollinators and herbivores. So those are the steps I could think of. There's a bunch more, but we're verging on an hour right now. Those are good stepping stones, good easy ways to get started. Yeah, I think that's where I'm gonna leave it.

You're at least aware of the problem and awareness is half the battle. So at this point, yeah, you do you. I would encourage you to be as lazy as possible, but you do you. That's, I think, if nothing else, the cat phrase in this podcast, which we've never set up until- Be as lazy as possible. And you do you. Okay, I thought it was the other one. It can be both. It can be two things. I don't think so, but I live in a place that has a strata, and they hire someone to come mow the lawn.

So next time they come mow the lawn, I'm gonna go out on my balcony and just shake my fist. Hey, fuck you. Kirstie, where is thy scythe? Really, there shouldn't be- Or, you know, at the very least, you should be yelling out, you're no Lancelot capability brown. Yeah. And then they'd be so offended. They're so sad. Because that's why everybody gets into landscaping. Yeah. And so good old Lancelot capability. And if nothing else, I hope you took that name from this episode.

Anyhow, I have been Taylor here with Chelsea to clearly not well-named people. I'm sorry if anybody who named me is listening. We are Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for listening, and we'll see you next week. Thank you for listening, too, Journey to the Fringe. If you have liked what you have listened to, please like, share, subscribe, or follow, depending on what venue you are listening to us through.

Also, please, if possible, leave a five-star review, as that really helps us in the algorithms. Should you wish to interact with us, please check us out on your social media of choice. I bet you we are there. And if you really wanna communicate with us and give us ideas for new episodes, or tell us that we're wrong and terrible, either way, please send us an email at JourneyTotheFringe at gmail.com. For now, I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you. Thank you.