I kind of like mowing my lawn because it gives me a chance to think! So even as hot as it was yesterday I spent 3 hours thinking in the heat. First of all I noticed, once again, that fescue doesn’t like to grow in the heat.
Fescue is a cool weather grass; Bermuda grass likes to grow here! On my south facing slope, which my irrigation system does not cover, the Bermuda has taken over just as it has in the neighborhood common areas; it is lush and beautiful green. On the irrigated part of my lawn the fescue struggles in spite of my watering and over-seeding it every fall. Bermuda ia a native grass, but most of my neighbors spray it with Round-Up every fall and reseed it with fescue. All of this leads to more expense, more work, more chemicals, and pouring more drinking water on lawns.
Having though that thought for all the years I have lived in the South my thoghts moved on to other ways we humans are unhappy with what Nature has provided us and try to make things better.
I have always loved roses. But I finally realized they really did not want to grow in the cold of Wisconsin and fungi, aphids, and Japanese beetles loved them in the South even more here than they did in the Midwest. So now I grow only Knock-Out roses which love it here. They bloom and bloom, are resistant to fungi and heat, and are not bothered very much by the beetles!
We are ever trying to improve things. We brought honey-suckle from Russia and Kudzu from Japan to beautify our landscapes and now they are destroying our forests. Most forests are now literally impossible to walk in because of the growth of honey suckle. These plants leaf out so early in the spring that the wild flowers get no sun and soon are all gone. Kudzu covered trees face the same end and soon are lying dead on the forest floor.
If we could be happy with our faces we would not need plastic surgery; we try to improve on Mother Nature. Athletes risk the side effect of steroids to improve their performance. We dye our hair, feed antibiotics to our livestock, chop off our dogs ears and tails (and our son’s foreskins) all to improve on Nature. We enhance breasts and almost every page on the web carries “male enhancements” ads.
Now, I’m not saying that all of the things we do are wrong; obviously many are not. We add fertilizer to our gardens and fields to improve our yields, we remove infected appendixes, we give antibiotics to sick people and animals, we do plastic surgery to revise scars and, we drain swamps to kill mosquitos and help avoid Malaria. We do countless other things that make life better. But we need to take a look at the things we do; are we making things better, or only pleasing our selves in the short term.
For me, I’m trying to grow what wants to grow. I’m planting Bermuda!