{"id":12298,"date":"2009-08-05T16:43:55","date_gmt":"2009-08-05T20:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2009\/08\/05\/12298.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T18:52:09","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:52:09","slug":"grass-or-greens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2009\/08\/05\/grass-or-greens\/","title":{"rendered":"Grass or Greens?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img alt=\"YHB pulling weeds\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/garden.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right;margin: 0 0 20px 20px\" \/><\/span><p>A book called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metropolismag.com\/story\/20080303\/edible-estates-attack-on-the-front-lawn-i\">Edible Estates : attack on the front lawn<\/a> crossed YHB&#8217;s path yesterday. Last night I ate some extraordinarily tasty squash, grown in our back yard and grilled by our next-door neighbor. And this morning I went out and mowed the lawn in two hundred degree heat (with five hundred percent humidity). All of which got me to thinking about this idea of getting rid of the grass and devoting the whole of our (tiny) yard to vegetables and flowers.\n<p>Not, you understand, that I am actually planning on doing anything about it. The yard, and particularly the gardens, are my Best Reader&#8217;s territory. I grew up in the desert. I lend a hand, here and there, but I don&#8217;t make the decisions. At the moment, we have a few small beds for veggies, and the rest is lawn.\n<p><strong>Regular Labor<\/strong>:<ul><li><i>Lawn<\/i>: Mowing, dandelion-pulling, nettle-pulling<\/li><li><i>Veggies<\/i>: weeding, harvesting, watering<\/li><\/ul>\n<p><strong>Annual Labor<\/strong>:<ul><li><i>Lawn<\/i>: Not a lot.<\/li><li><i>Veggies<\/i>: Purchasing new plants\/seeds and soil, planting, mulching<\/li><\/ul>\n<p><strong>Money<\/strong>:<ul><li><i>Lawn<\/i>: occasional mower sharpening or repair.<\/li><li><i>Veggies<\/i>: Large initial expense for plants, but then reduced expense for veggies at the store.<\/li><\/ul>\n<p><strong>You know, for kids!<\/strong>:<ul><li><i>Lawn<\/i>: running, jumping, playing catch, kicking a ball around<\/li><li><i>Veggies<\/i>: education, nutrition<\/li><\/ul>\n<p><strong>It&#8217;s all about YHB<\/strong>:<ul><li><i>Lawn<\/i>: I grew up with a lawn, even in the desert. It seems natural. <\/li><li><i>Veggies<\/i>: Yum, plus it&#8217;s fun to watch them grow.<\/li><\/ul>\n<p>I should also note that where the regular labor of a lawn can be replaced with money outlay, that&#8217;s less true of the regular labor of a veggie garden, until either the Perfect Non-Reader or a neighborhood kid can be given that those tasks. At the moment, with our lives how they are, we don&#8217;t want to spend money on the outdoors, but as we get older, our interest in avoiding the trowel or mower may increase. Also, the nearest public park\/playground is far enough away that a parent would have to go with children for quite a few years yet; it&#8217;s walking distance, but across major streets.\n<p>What do y&#8217;all do, those of you who have control over an outdoor patch near where you live?\n<p><I>Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,<br>-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Which Your Humble Blogger did lose all the tomatoes to the Blight, but that won&#8217;t happen next year, will it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18845,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12298\/revisions\/18845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}