141–150 of 330 posts
Personally, I think people don't appreciate how little manual labor can help you focus and keep things in perspective.
With a bit more TLC over the next few years, I think we’ll be in good shape as a little oasis nestled amongst the cornfields and pastures. We fortunately don’t have wild parsnip and the garlic mustard is almost gone. Japanese barberry runs rampant in the woods, though. That will take some effort to get rid of.
I thought the mosquitoes would be terrible, but, while present, they seem to have been kept in check by the wind and the birds.
Are there environmentally friendly alternatives to the traditional grass lawn if one uses their lawn for sports, BBQ, and play? Maybe just allowing grass to grow more naturally rather than using pesticides and removing weeds?
I’m fortunate enough to have recently purchased a 38 acre property in the Midwest, a little hollow with small hills and a spring-fed creek. About 30 acres are woods and the remainder is open, most of it unmowed with lots of native wildflowers and grasses, part of it low and swampy and part high and dry. It was amazing spending the summer there and learning about other butterflies than Monarchs (though we had plenty o…
Careful, it has more ticks than anything else, and the first time you get bitten you’re not going outside for 21 days.
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If you buy a robot lawn mower, it is.
Maintaining a lawn is more than just mowing it. There's aerating/seeding, watering, pulling-weeds/pest-spraying, etc. The mowing is the easiest part, at least for my relatively small lawn.
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> But the whole 'using water' claim is muddied. The water the animal drinks passes through it and into the ground. Yes, it's not like the water is destroyed. It may be diverted from directly flowing into a river, sure, and perhaps goes straight back to the atmosphere rather than into the sea via evaporation, exhalation, and transpiration... but it's not gone .
I don't really see the point of this argument, isn't this true for basically _all_ water usage?
I’m fortunate enough to have recently purchased a 38 acre property in the Midwest, a little hollow with small hills and a spring-fed creek. About 30 acres are woods and the remainder is open, most of it unmowed with lots of native wildflowers and grasses, part of it low and swampy and part high and dry. It was amazing spending the summer there and learning about other butterflies than Monarchs (though we had plenty o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But the whole 'using water' claim is muddied. The water the animal drinks passes through it and into the ground. Yes, it's not like the water is destroyed. It may be diverted from directly flowing into a river, sure, and perhaps goes straight back to the atmosphere rather than into the sea via evaporation, exhalation, and transpiration... but it's not gone .
What the cow returns trashes streams as it’s high in nitrates. It’s incredibly damaging. New Zealand is a great example of this and the huge expansion of our dairy industry has done huge harm.
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setbacks are about reducing FAR so people need to buy a lot more land than they need to build a home to live in. It helps keep property values high and land as a scarce resource.
That is a consequence, not the intention. I don’t see how you can avoid street canyons otherwise.