A picture of Suburbia.

[Gheld]

Time for another Gheld thread. The kind that invokes entertaining thought about every day things that we don't really think so hard about,without being fun enough to be arbitrarily moved to the "Fun" section.

I'm a Suburbia guy personally, just as I'm sure some of you are as well. Imagine yourself in the perfect suburban yard.

A swing hanging from the apple tree, with 1" long grass covering the yard underneath, making you feel further from the city center and a little closer to nature, but wait, what?

In nature grass grows to be 2 or 3 feet long in dense patches, creating the perfect hiding place for insects and predators. And Trees? Where the hell does grass grow underneath trees? Not in nature it doesn't.

Admittedly, with the average lawnmower weighing in more or less around the 100 lb mark, and the sites, and the smells, and the sounds, mowing the lawn is fun, it's a decent low impact workout, and it keeps your brain busy. Raking leaves is complete bullshit though. You have to rake the leaves up, otherwise they keep the light and the air from getting to the grass, preventing it from growing. Whereas for those very same reasons you'll rarely find thick uniform grass growing under a tree canopy in nature.

So we have to do all that extra yard work every year just to preserve this unrealistic picture of nature (Short grass, which somehow grows underneath trees). Sure it looks good, but that's probably because it's comfortable and familiar, it's what we've been doing because it's what we do. (i.e. it's become a cultural staple).

So why did somebody go and decide that it was the proper picture of suburbia to have 1" long grass growing underneath trees, as has never happened without human intervention in the history of the planet?

Did we just not know better back then?
Was it purely out of aesthetics?
Was it some landscapers way of torturing the people of the future?
Is it our way of giving mother nature the finger and exerting our dominance over the planet's biodiversity?
Or was there some otherworldly explanation?

And do you like mowing the lawn? Do you actually enjoy raking leaves?(you sick...deranged...)

Poll incoming: Discuss!

[Deleted]

Grass does grow under trees, only if the trees form tight canopies will the grass have trouble growing. Also the main reason you don't see grass in forests is because it needs insane amounts of water to keep green.

I neither enjoy mowing it let alone raking leaves... that's why my families uses clover, which spreads around very quickly, is very resistant to damage and doesnt need as much water.

[Gheld]

Grass does grow under trees, only if the trees form tight canopies will the grass have trouble growing. Also the main reason you don't see grass in forests is because it needs insane amounts of water to keep green.

I neither enjoy mowing it let alone raking leaves... that's why my families uses clover, which spreads around very quickly, is very resistant to damage and doesnt need as much water.

'Where you do see it growing under trees though, it's never as dense as lawn grass is what I mean. (the obvious reason is that their tight-knit root structure provides soil stability, but that's not as fun to think about)