"......By the end of World War II, over 80 percent of American households were growing some of their own food. Within months after Victory Day this activity quickly subsided. With its demise went the widespread knowledge among most Americans of how to grow their own food... the introduction of the leisure weekend, the abundance of fresh water, the production of industrial pesticides, the availability of the lawn mower and cheap gas, and the rise of home ownership with the explosion of new suburban housing developments in the 1940s and '50s all set the stage for the unfurling of the great American lawn as we know it today. Its puritanical aspects seem suited to the Eisenhower years of good manners. Is there a connection between landscape and hairstyles?... [yikes!]
...In the United States we plant more grass than any other crop: currently lawns cover more than thirty million acres. Given the way we lavish precious resources on it and put it everywhere that humans go, aliens landing in any American city today would assume that grass must be the most precious earthly substance of all. Yet the lawn devours resources while it pollutes. It is maniacally groomed with mowers and trimmers powered by the two-stroke motors that are responsible for much of our greenhouse gas emissions... To eradicate invading plants the lawn is drugged with pesticides and herbicides, which are then washed into our water supply with sprinklers and hoses, dumping our increasingly rare fresh drinking resource down the gutter. [more water and pesticides on our lawns than used by the entire US agricultural industry.]
Meanwhile, at the grocery store we confront our food. Engineered fruits and vegetables wrapped in plastic and Styrofoam are cultivated not for taste but for appearance, uniformity, and ease of transport, then sprayed with chemicals to inhibit the diseases and pests that thrive in an unbalanced ecosystem. The produce in the average American dinner is trucked 1,500 miles to reach our plates. We don't know where our fruits and vegetables came from or who grew them. Perhaps we have even forgotten that plants were responsible for the mass-produced meal we are consuming. This detachment from the source of our food breeds a careless attitude toward our role as custodians of the land that feeds us. Perhaps we would reconsider what we put down the drain, on the ground, and in the air if there was more direct evidence that we will ultimately ingest it...
The Edible Estates project proposes the replacement of the domestic front lawn with a highly productive edible landscape. Food grown in our front yards will connect us to the seasons, the organic cycles of the earth, and our neighbors. The banal lifeless space of uniform grass in front of the house will be replaced with the chaotic abundance of biodiversity. In becoming gardeners we will reconsider our connection to the land, what we take from it, and what we put in it. Each yard will be a unique expression of its location and of the inhabitant and his or her desires..."
[The full, spot-on, literate, history-referencing and thought-provoking "excerpt" from the book is here and below. Here's a sub-3min. "TreeHugger Video on 'Edible Estates.'" For me, this all helped conceptually soothe the tight muscles from digging in the veggie garden yesterday. If you're vegan or vegetarian and not growing some of your own food, even on an apartment balcony, you're missing out on something important. Go grow your own & Go Vegan.]
