I agree very strongly with Hamilton Nolan. This, especially, is a nice paragraph:

Lawns are a false idol. They represent the ancient American ideal of taming nature to our own ends— an ideal formed in a time before we realized that we had already “tamed” nature so much that we were going to destroy ourselves. The desire for a bright green, evenly clipped, thoroughly artificial lawn comes from the same place as the desire for strict dress codes, all white neighborhoods, and dead hippies. There is no better indicator of barely concealed authoritarian sentiment than a sweltering neighborhood full of neatly trimmed lawns. The sort of person who might take on the duty of enforcing homeowner’s association lawn care bylaws is the same sort of person who would only pardon scorch marks on a lawn if they came from a burning cross.

This one is too:

Americans do not use their lawns. Americans, collectively, are obese people that sit in air-conditioned houses watching cable television. Let’s be honest: all of the millions upon millions of gallons of wasted water that we pour onto our beloved lawns do not go to benefit our children, who will be frolicking in the grass, or to enhance our communities, by providing a bucolic scene for neighborly interaction. Our kids play video games. We never talk to our neighbors. Everyone stays inside, with the climate control close at hand. The lawns that we expend so many resources on are primarily used for nothing but glancing at once in a while. They are the vegetative version of a coat of paint. And frankly, we can’t afford them any more. We need that water to grow food and to drink and to help poorly planned drought-ridden cities like yours to not dry up and blow away completely. At this point in America’s environmental evolution, diverting water to grow yourself a god damn lawn that shouldn’t even be there in the first place is like using the water supply in a lifeboat to wash your hair. It simply cannot be allowed.

 

Do you have a lawn? How do you justify it? Wouldn’t you be happier without it?

Written by Corey
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.