Lawns

Reflecting on the reading about lawns I was thinking how much I associate an amazing green lawn with some sort of eliteness. One thing I find intriguing is how a lawn is an ideal yet at the same time it is taken for granted on campus. I would bet a good amount of people on this campus grew up in homes with nice green lawns. I would also bet a good amount of people would list the lawns around campus as a good aesthetic touch and that without the lawns Saint Olaf would be a very different place, probably for worse. Yet hundreds of people every day cut across the lawns, in the name of saving time, marring the campus. I just find it curious how this value of a green lawn does not transfer over to campus. Granted probably not all the people cutting across the lawns had a lawn and do not place the same value on it but I still find it interesting.

My dad loves to garden and so we have always had a great lawn; a combination of flowers and gardens and green grass. I have grown up with a lawn around me and in some way there is an element of home in a lawn. A lawn can be a place to lay down or a place to run on. I love lawns as landscape or I guess I love green space whether it be a lawn or an actual field or forest. The lawn always has posed an interesting problem for me as an environmentalist though. It is essentially this huge monoculture and many lawn enthusiasts load their lawns with fertilizers, herbicides, and other harmful chemicals, but at the same time it is preferable to concrete or any other man made inorganic surface.