Bad Grass

Back in 2013 photographer Stéphane Sednaoui was cutting the red grass from his field in France and posted this photo on FB.

"Countryside removing the bad grass."

The picture reminded me that as a child my father had my older brother and I hand-pluck the weeds from our backyard in the Blue Hills south of Boston.

We were too young to use sharp implements. It was a thankless job, especially since many of the 'weeds' were wild flowers of New England. We uprooted by hand. No gloves. A thankless job for an nine and eight year-old.

All to plant more grass seeds, so we could mow the lawn every two weeks from spring to early autumn. I still recall the clumps of dirt on my Keds sneakers

Once I was old enough and moved away from the suburbs. I have almost never pulled weeds or mowed a lawn again, except for once off Round Hill Road in Greenwich, Connecticut. On a chariot lawnmower. With a broken throttle. to mow a knee-high lawn. In truth I have always had a mighty fear of lawnmowers. I feared the blade coming detached and slicing off my legs at the knee like a machete. I leapt off the chariot mower. It crashed into a rock outcropping. I left it there and refused to touch it. Never no more the mower.

Free the weeds.

Stephane and I had been friends in Paris back in the 1980s. I haven't seen him in ages. I wish him well.

ps suburban lawns are a toxic blight on nature. Weeed killers, such as Bayer's Round-up, whose main ingrediant, glyphosate, kills everything green and may cause cancer. They have substituted another toxin and the EPA has yet to recognize its danger.

pps as a child in 1960 the town sprayed DDT in our neighborhood against mosquitoes. We gleefully ran through the white cloud. We were guinea pigs for organochloride which was manufactured by Monsanto, later to be bought by Bayer. DDT had a diasasterous effect on bird population and almost exterminated the bald eagel. We thought nothing of it. DDT had no smell, but when sprayed from the back of the truck wikipedia reported that it had a sweet smell. Monsanto called it 'summerlike'. What me worry. I was only eight and my whole life ahead of me. And still today. I'll never mow another lawn. Let the grass live.

Photo : Stéphane Sednaoui