Fighting The War On Lawns

For every glorious achievement our civilisation notches up you can be sure some nutjob will come up with an equally stupid idea. It's a Yin Yang thing.

There have been many glowing examples of extreme stupidity over the years, but there is one invention that scarred me for life. A thing so frustrating, pointless and downright stupid that a whole chapter was devoted to it in Olwen Munt's classic book 'Idiotic Inventions of the 20th Century'.

So what is it you ask? The Automatic Banana Peeler? Umbrella Hats? The Toddler Choker Chain? Nope. The thing that very nearly drove me into an institution in my youth was none other than the electric, hovering lawn mower.

Now as far as Dads go, mine was not really a hard taskmaster. I was, generally speaking, your typical slackarsed teenager who had it pretty good at home. Given a choice between lying in bed listening to The Ramones or getting out to enjoy the 'beautiful day outside', well... there was no choice really. In fact I kinda remember doing pretty much doing bugger all around the house. Except when it came to lawns. It was ironic that the one job I hated like no other was the one job I could never get out of, no matter what. The neighbours were probably thankful about it, as I have no doubts that Dad would have been out there mowing wearing nothing but a smile and his flesh coloured speedos.

It wasn't too bad early on. My first memories were of our clapped-out Victa pull start (In my opinion, 'start' was a term that was often a bit generous). Like all boys, I enjoyed engines and grease and the smell of exhaust smoke. I had a particular fondness for mixing up the 2-stroke. Sometimes I'd give it the occasional deep inhale, as you do when you are twelve and fairly stupid. Sometimes I'd fill up a matchbox car with petrol and roll it blazing down our driveway. Pretty stock-standard clueless-young-boy behaviour.

(SGA would like to state that in no way do we condone petrol sniffing or backyard arson.)

It was the month of my 14th birthday that things got ugly. Our Victa had seen better days. Quite a number of better days. On this particular day it took exception to me running over the head of my sister's Baby Alive doll. It farted and wheezed a lot before coming to a grinding stop. Forever.

Then came the electric hover mower. I dunno what posessed Dad to move away from the tried and true smoke blower, but there it sat in the garage. Sneering at me. The thing about hovering mowers is they have no wheels, they supposedly float on a cushion of air. Right. What they didn't say in their ads is that they only work if your lawn is less than 2mm long. And when it is that short, who needs to mow it? You kinda get the idea. And then there was the cord. I lost count of the number of times I ran over the stupid thing in the end. I'm fairly certain that subconsciously it may have been intentional. I'm still amazed I wasn't fried. By the time I moved out of home I had cut that cord so many times it must have been about 4 feet long. Dad got very good at fixing extension leads.

I should also point out here that Dad still lives in the same house in Bulleen... and his massive green mat was long ago turned into a bunch of of beautiful, zero-maintenance garden beds. He was on the Lawn Alternatives bandwagon a long time before the rest of us. Which also makes me wonder if he only kept the lawn while I was growing up because he knew how much I hated mowing it. I must ask him that.

Anyway, that long and boring story is how I came to develop my lawn phobia. I swore that one day I would own a house that would not contain one blade of lawn.

So you can imagine how uneasy I was when my wife Belinda and I turned up to the first open inspection of what was to become our new house. From these first few pics I think you will agree it's a bit of an understatement to say the previous owners liked their lawn. A lot. It was lucky we both fell in love with the house straight away, because all that grass was starting to give me a facial tick. Once we actually owned the house (or owned a large mortgage anyway) I made it my mission in life to vanquish the green mat forever.

3 years later

Well, it's now nearly 3 years since we moved in. I started with a bang at first, and had pretty much removed the entire front lawn and transformed it into gardens within 6 months. They say that if there is ever a nuclear holocaust cockroaches would be one of the few survivors. From bitter experience, I would like to add couchgrass and kikuyu to that list.

There's still a bit of planting and mulching to be done, but the most important thing is that NOW I HAVE NO FRONT LAWN!

The old Italian lady who wanders past our house every day seems to approve, which is nice. At least I think that's what she is saying. It's a little odd that she wanders past every single time I am gardening out there, no matter what time of day it is. She either wanders a lot or she is stalking me.

Out Back

Summer came and it got too hot for digging. Drinking mojitos and smoking cigars was much more inviting. But faced with the prospect of still having to mow spurred me on. Many hours sweating at the end of a pick and shovel eventually paid off, and a year later I finished the backyard as well. Good things take time, and working quickly is not something I will ever be accused of. Like the front, I still have a bunch of planting and mulching to do. But... NOW I HAVE NO BACK LAWN! I also have a pretty decent vegie patch happening.

What about the dog?

A lot of visitors hit me with that one. 'What about poor Polly, she only has these stones to sit on'. Well...

(a) Polly is a dog. Some dogs get eaten. If she has to put up with a few little stones, but she doesn't have to worry about someone throwing her in a deep fryer I reckon she has it pretty good.

and

(b) I have made Polly her own little garden bed around where she is free to sniff, dig, bury and bog to her heart's content. I've had to fence off all the other garden beds because, quite frankly, she is a lunatic. She also has a thing for rosemary and tomatoes, which may well make her the world's first vegan Rottweiler.

What about the cat?

Well, admittedly nobody has ever asked that, but I can't very well include a pic of Polly and not one of Hamlet. That would be favouritism. I'd say it is a safe bet that he prefers sleeping in the shade under a bunch of bushes to lying out in the blazing sun. I planted some catmint for him and he has never been within 20 metres of it, but he does like rubbing his gums on the magnolia buds.

Nature Strip - The Final Frontier

Having finally knocked off the back and front lawns, I decided I had earned a long rest from gardening. There were long motorbike rides to be had on the weekend, not to mention more mojitos and cigars. There was, however, one little detail I had yet to clear up. The nature strip. Given it was the only lawn left in the house, it seemed silly to go and borrow a mower for such a small area. So I kept justifying the expanding jungle with 'it's the council's land... if they don't like it like that, they can mow it themselves'. That wore thin pretty quickly with Belinda. I must admit it was kind of embarrassing walking home from the market. As soon as we turned into our street all you could see were neat, trim nature strips. All the way up to our house that is. You couldn't see anything much past there.

It came to a head the day we saw a family of lions dragging a dead antelope into the grass at the front of our house. So back onto the pick I went, and a month later here's our no-mow nature strip. One day I will plant the thing out... but for now I am happy to just pull the occasional weed and kick back in my hammock.

So get cracking, I'm a certified horticultural nuffy... you could list my plant knowledge on a beer coaster. In big, fat texta. So if I can do this anyone can. Trust me.