At 10:09 AM 8/7/99 -0700, Paul DiBiase wrote:
The problem is
>that the unmowed area is now unusable to the citizens as well as the
>geese. I am not sure if the unmowed area creates beneficial habitat
>for native birds and animals.

Unusable? I guess it depends on what uses you have in mind. Unmown grass,
besides looking like real plants instead of green pavement, usually hosts
quite a few insects if left alone for awhile. Insects usually attract
insect eaters, etc. It still makes for an exotic degenerate ecosystem, but
it seems like an improvement over the lawn/cranefly/starling/goose/power
mower ecosystem. As a hangover from my youth, I still like to idly pull the
flower heads off grasses and chew on the soft parts of the stems at the
joints - there's a use for you!

I've had the privelege of living in Seattle's Central district, where
(until recently, at least) neighbors didn't think it was their business to
complain if you didn't mow the lawn. I was proud to have the tallest stand
of grass in the neighborhood, and was pleased when I could look up to it.
Unmown, the individual grass species revealed their different characters
instead of blending into a monotonous green carpet - the knee-high red haze
of redtop flowers, the neatly ordered fruits of rye grass, the soft leaves
of velevet grass, the fat spikes of Timothy grass. In my current
neighborhood, people come by and offer to hire out their weedwhackers if I
don't mow, so I observe the dreaded Lawn Social Code, at least until such
time as I can finish replacing these weeds with natives, vegetables, berry
bushes, herbs etc.

I would be interested in knowing in which park this unmowing is happening.
It pleases me that the parks dept. has taken this step. On the other hand,
they recently authorized the Friends of Ferdinand Park to plant MORE
lakeside grass. The grant allots $9000 for grass seed alone; the city parks
dept. (our taxes) will pay for mowing and watering! The state (our taxes
again) will probably pay to grape-spray the lawn, addle the goose eggs
and/or gas the geese! The park is already well-visited by geese, so the
parks dept. might have anticipated that more grass would bring more geese.
Since the new lawn replaces a parking lot, it seems like an improvement,
but there was presumably the opportunity to do something botanically more
interesting than adding further to the "goose problem". There are lovely
native willows and glacial erratics at the site, either of which might have
formed the basis for a thematic educational garden rather than yet another
boring goose feeding station.
It would be great if there were a grass tax to help mitigate the economic
and environmental costs of grassifying the world.



Paul Talbert, Hillman City, Seattle
tuisto at oz.net