The Weed Monster
A little trash fragment that led me down a rabbit hole about the monsters that haunt us, the American lawn, and the remedy of wildness
[Hello friends :) It’s been awhile. I’ve been chipping away at this essay throughout the summer and happy to finally share it. with love, Rachel]
PART 1: THE MUSE STRIKES
Earlier this summer when leaving the park, I spotted something that had become “trash”, by way of its unintentional relocation from wherever it had been before. Some forces of wind and mystery had landed it at this spot beneath the shade of a tree on the edge of the tennis court.
It was a sign advert for a lawn care company, that like most lawn care companies, helps to remove unwanted “weeds” and insects from one’s yard. What caught my eye was the image at the top, gazing out from its perch — a digital illustration of a creature that I could only imagine was the embodiment of the perfect lawn’s nemesis — gasp! — a threat to lawns everywhere!
This cute lil guy:
“Yes!” I thought, and carefully tore the weed monster away from the rest of the sign so I could take it with me, along with a strand of white sequins that was caught under the chain link fence.
(This is how I usually acquire my art supplies.)
I gazed into this being’s larvae-filled eye sockets and instantly fell in love, my imagination whirling with ideas for the collage that I would build around their image. I held this piece of glossy cardstock aloft with the fervor of Helga from Hey Arnold finding a perfect specimen for her closet gum shrine1. Though it was likely intended to compel the average lawn owner into hiring what we’ll call “The Lawn Company” to eradicate all manner of weeds from their sight, this little monster had stolen my heart.
Later that night I stared at it lovingly while talking my brother Zach’s ear off about my sudden fascination. Those cave-like eyes and a body made of soil, skin covered in plants. Why do I love it so much??
Both Zach and I went to school for graphic design, and wondered about the thought process behind the art, and how the designer had made it (probably Photoshop, where individual photos of plants and clumps of grass had been expertly clipped out and clone-stamped into this masterpiece). I wanted to know what the conversations were like in the marketing meetings where this creature had been conceived.
“We need a symbol, perhaps a mascot, to represent our brand.”
What research images had graced their mood board? Were there any sketches? What had other iterations of this mascot looked like? Why had they decided to go this direction?
“It should be something that shows that weeds are scary, the bad guy — but not too scary as to deter potential customers.”
Out of curiosity, I sent the company an email:
Just about one minute later, I received a response.
I was stunned to see how quickly the plot had thickened. Danny the Dandelion! The creature had a name. “Monstrous good looks”. And a way of communicating with just enough vagueness and pep to arouse suspicions that I was in a conversation with a robot.
I called the number and asked the customer service representative a few questions about Danny’s origins, which ended up being fruitless. “The mascot is actually an AI,” is what I was told. “I don’t know anything else about it.”
What I was really curious about was how, in the attempt to create a monster, a worthy adversary, The Lawn Company had ended up creating something so strangely endearing — dare I say, “cute”. Was it only endearing to me, or to them as well? Did the employees of this lawn company have any feelings of friendliness or warmth towards this entity, as they sprayed “eco-friendly” herbicide to destroy its likeness?
I wasn’t sure how to ask this over the phone without sounding antagonistic. My admiration for the art itself was genuine, so I wanted to start there, build some rapport, and hopefully get into some deeper conversations later. But no luck.
“Can you connect me with someone from your marketing team?”
“No, I’m sorry I can’t.”
“Do people ever comment on the mascot, and think it’s cute?”
“Um — yea, sometimes…”
Hmm.
Zach and I made a few more attempts2 to get answers from the AI chatbot, but couldn’t break through the fortress that Danny guarded like a friendly, though somewhat lobotomized minion.
———
We had recently watched “Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched”, a documentary about folk horror, a genre I hadn’t known existed. I’ve never been much of a horror movie person, save the middle school years of watching films like “House of Wax” and “Hide and Seek” at sleepovers as a way to test ourselves against fear, and each other. But this (3+ hrs long !) doc made me appreciate horror in a new way — that it can be a medium to explore the hidden, underground anxieties in a culture — to bring suppressed elements of a social psyche into the open so that they can be reckoned with. Folk horror, specifically, encompasses stories that explore a culture’s relationship to the land, the ancestors and spirits of that land, and wounds of the past that are resurfacing to be seen and faced. The stories vary depending on where in the world they are originating, and the history of that land and its peoples.
These suppressed anxieties are made manifest in plots that tell of the resurfacing of skeletal remains in a field, or an outsider’s witnessing of ancient rituals that take place within an isolated or forgotten community; or demonic entities that re-emerge from the deep dark of a forest, body of water, or the underground where they’d been exiled long ago. The horrors of the past seem to reliably reemerge to haunt and stalk those responsible for their exile until an inevitable confrontation takes place.
From what I can tell these suppressed (often misunderstood) elements are usually coming back for a logical reason. Part of the subconscious needs to be faced and understood in order for resolution and renewal to be possible.
I can’t help but think that there’s a connection here to Danny the Dandelion…the monster whose very existence looms over the precious, perfectly uniform squares of grass that so many spend hours - lifetimes - maintaining.
Imagine the dread as those jagged green leaves unfurl from the underground every spring like clockwork, the terror of their yellow blossoms yawning open at the dawn of every day…the humming fever pitch of bumblebees and butterflies that flock to their oozing nectar….their feathery seeds confidently lifting off into the air, forever slipping out of grasp…
If the weed monster was a villain in a folk horror film, what would it have to tell us about the shadowy fears lingering in our collective psyche? Please bear with me as I allow my muse, Danny, to take me on a journey into the underworld, deep below the surface of the green grass.
Part 2: MEDICINE
My initial interest in the weed monster (besides the obvious cuteness!) was in the actual weeds that are growing out of his skin: Dandelion, Plantain, and Wood Sorrel. These are all medicinal, edible plants, with long histories of being used by peoples around the world. Dandelions and plantain are understood to have been intentionally brought to the “new world” by European immigrants because these plants were so widely used in gardens, kitchens, and medicine cabinets in their home countries.
A little about Dandelion via Maine Organic Farmers & Gardeners:
“Dandelions are a green and growing first aid kit. The use of dandelions in the healing arts goes so far back that tracing its history is like trying to catch a dandelion seed as it floats over the grass. For millenniums, people have been using dandelion tonics to help body’s liver remove toxins from the bloodstream. In olden times, dandelions were also prescribed for every ailment, from warts to the plague. To this day, herbalists hail the dandelion as the perfect plant medicine: It is a gentle diuretic that provides nutrients and helps the digestive system function at peak efficiency.”
and Plantain, via Indigo Herbs of Glastonbury:
“Plantain arrived in the Americas on the soles of European shoes and planted itself throughout the continent, hence its nickname "Whiteman's Footprint". The Native Americans observed that it followed the white man, springing up underneath his feet wherever he walked. Plantain leaves were used to heal wounds, reduce inflammation, staunch bleeding and to soothe stings, burns and rashes. They were taken internally for many complaints including coughs, colds, bronchitis, diarrhoea, gastritis, haemorrhoids and bladder infections. …the powdered root [was used] as an antidote to snake bites and to draw out other poisonous toxins.”
And Wood Sorrel via Feral Foraging:
“Wood sorrel (Oxalis), aka sourgrass, or my favorite name, “Nature’s Skittles”, is an amazing edible wild plant! This is one of the best plants for beginner foragers because they are easy to find, easy to identify, and extremely common!”
———
In the last decade or so of my own amateur foraging and self-guided herbalism studies, I’ve learned that many, if not most plants that are commonly considered “weeds” (aka useless plants that are ruining everything!) are medicinal, edible, and packed with nutrients.
One of the greatest and most wholesome, most true, delights of my adult life is being able to identify wild plants that I can eat or use for medicine. It has felt like learning a new language — one that pulls a veil back to reveal another layer of reality I hadn’t been able to see our touch before. It makes me feel more at home wherever I go, to get to know the plants there — like I am weaving myself back into the world.
The delight of snacking on wild raspberries, making tea from linden flowers I’ve picked by hand, feeling the aromatic spice of a yarrow tincture dissolve the tickle of a cold, and sprinkling wild rose petals into an herbal spliff — it simply feels like magic…sublime and satisfying.
I’ll always remember my first forage…it was mullein, with fuzzy soft leaves, a tall firm stalk swollen with seeds, growing along the shore of the lake. After double and triple checking the identification in my Rocky Mountain Medicinal Plants book, and visiting the plants over the course of a few days to await a sense of permission to work with them, I nervous/excitedly tore the leaves into small pieces and poured boiling hot water over them to steep. This took place during a family reunion, and I remember my uncle trepidatiously looking on as I sipped, and sipped…and didn’t die. It tasted green and surprisingly sweet, like I was drinking directly from the veins of the earth.
On one of the best days of my life3 (so far) — the Bioneers conference in Boulder in 2017 — I heard many fascinating and affirming things in the workshops I attended. One of them was the idea that plants show up where they are needed.
For example: in a society rampant with toxicity, the dandelion, a plant that is naturally detoxifying to the liver and digestive system, just so happens to grow “like a weed”. In other words: abundantly, and persistently…and apparently in places they aren’t wanted.
As hard as some of us work to remove it, dandelion is highly efficient at propagating itself and adapting to, (while improving), its environment — aerating compacted soil with their deep roots, fixing nitrogen and restoring nutrients, creating habitat for beneficial microorganisms, and offering medicine that could heal our guts if we’d let them. 4
Part 3: THE AMERICAN LAWN
In my deep dive into The Lawn Company’s website, I came across this graphic on one of their blog posts:
Dang.
TLC is clearly good at what they do. “The Danny Chronicles” is a creative idea. (I have a fleeting fantasy that each new issue of the chronicle shares another helpful use of dandelions. But then this lawn company would have to be an entirely different operation).
Alas, the language they’ve chosen to use makes it clear that Danny is an enemy and that they, the heroes/protagonists are committed to destroying Danny and his “army of yellow-headed troublemakers”.
“Locked, loaded, and ready to reclaim your turf.”
“We’ll serve Danny an eviction notice he won’t soon forget"
“Let’s show Danny whose lawn this really is.”
Whoa. Personally, a dandelion dance party sounds like a good time…why be the party poopers coming in to kill the vibe?
It’s fascinating to me that the weed monster is the face of their business, and yet, also embodies what they are charging money to destroy. The Lawn Company needs the weed monster. The business depends on it.
Just like the business of war depends on the existence of an enemy — or perhaps more often than not, the invention of an enemy.
The dandelions, plantain, and sorrel aren’t actually causing any objective harm that I can see. The weed monster was created to justify the protection of a manufactured ideal, a perfectly uniform grassy lawn.
I mean, what is this fight really about?
What’s at the root of this frenzied attachment to having a perfect “weed-free” lawn?
My immediate assumption is that lawn = American dream. White picket fence, etc. A symbol of wealth, leisure, purity, and control. And of course, “fitting in” — assimilating to a shared dream.
In an article on their website, the lawn supply company Pennington confirms this assumption, reassuring potential customers that “Beautiful, healthy, well-tended lawns remain part of the American Dream.”
In the same article Pennington explains that the lawns we know today were conceptualized in the 1700s by landscape designers in England and France. “Drawing on the word "launde,"which referred to a grassy woodland clearing, they coined the term "lawn" … The amount of maintenance required by these new garden features kept them strictly in the realm of the rich. The only available lawn mowers were either livestock or scythe-yielding servants.”
It makes sense that lawns would start as something available to the upper class, who had the money to have them maintained, and the leisure time to enjoy them. They could demonstrate how wealthy they were by the fact that they could afford to surround their home with an ornamental, “decorative” crop, rather than food to sustain the household5. Meanwhile, as I learned in this historical timeline of gardening in the US, “most Early American yards stayed devoted to vegetable and herb gardens, or grazing animals.”
Virginia Scott Jenkins elaborates on the development of what one might call ‘lawn culture’ in her 1994 book, The Lawn: A History of an American OBSESSION.
…A quick aside to point out the ALL CAPS in OBSESSION here. Interestingly, another book I found on the subject uses “obsessive” in the title: American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn.) When I looked up “obsessed” in the thesaurus while writing this, I couldn’t help but notice how many of these words would lend themselves quite well to the plot of a horror movie: ”haunted”, “bedeviled” “possessed” “tormented”. Just saying…
Anyway, back to the history:
“The notion of a front lawn began to take shape at the end of the eighteenth century, borrowed by a few wealthy Americans from French and English aristocratic landscape architecture. In the mid-nineteenth century, homeowners were encouraged to beautify their home grounds with lawns and gardens to serve as examples to neighbors and passersby. Community leaders assumed that people with good taste could influence others and that the lower classes or the less educated would follow the example set for them. Front lawns began as a luxury of the wealthy but became a status symbol of the middle class. Commercial messages taught new members of the middle class appropriate behavior and taste.” [bold added by me]
To me this information points to something pretty profound which is that so many of the conditions that are taken for granted as being “just the way it is” are not inevitable, as they often seem. They are inventions, even whims, put forth by a relatively small group of people who had a vested interest in inventing standards that would keep them in proximity to power and influence. Through subtle and not-so-subtle tactics, these inventions / stories / preferences become packaged and sold as the singular way that things “should” be, and leveraged to become a reality6 for the masses, convincing people that this is the way it should be, and what everyone should want. At some point, we begin to believe that it’s what we intrinsically do want.
Part 4: THE COST OF FITTING IN
Virginia goes on to say:
“In many communities there is enormous peer pressure to have a good lawn. The definition of a “good” lawn has evolved to mean a plot with a single type of grass with no intruding weeds, kept mown at a height of an inch and a half, uniformly green, and neatly edged… A multibillion-dollar lawn industry has developed in the United States, unlike any other country in the world. National lawn-care companies promise their customers a perfect, weed-free, pest-free, springy, emerald-green lawn.”
The lawnmowers, the pesticides, the weed-wackers, the leaf blowers, the sod…it’s incredible to consider all the money and time that is spent in order to maintain this very specific standard.
In this short lawn-themed video, Michael Pollan makes the ~ poignant ~ point that “your front yard belongs to the community as much as it does to you…how well you take care of your lawn is the way you express your solidarity with your neighbors.”
In this way each individual lawn is a representation of the whole neighborhood. Individuals choose (or are forced by their HOA) to uphold a social standard, for the perceived good of the group, and for the approval of one’s peers. A standard that is rarely questioned, because now it’s become part of our landscape, part of what’s expected.
I think the idea of taking care of one’s space as an act of solidarity with one’s neighbors is a beautiful one. It seems very natural, healthy, and empowering to have a sense of shared responsibility with the people around us for the conditions of our world. The problem here seems to be that this intrinsic motivation to align with one’s community has been directed towards something so empty and pointless.
As Pollan points out:
“The irony of the American lawn is that it’s so exposed [in the front, with cars driving by, where everyone can see you]… so nobody spends any time there…We all stay in the back yard… and the front lawn becomes purely a symbol.”
Beyond its symbolism, the American Lawn en masse is destructive as hell.
In my research I came across Mergoat Magazine, who published an issue earlier this year under the title “Death to the American Lawn” (recently restocked, & on its way to me as I write this). In one of their Instagram posts on the topic they wrote:
“The American Lawn is a site of ecological alienation…
…the colonial aesthetic of ecological dominance.
It feeds no one7, offers no opportunity for reciprocity, and excludes the possibility of relationality.
It exists only in service to the logic of cleanliness, sterility, and subjugation.”
Rather than keeping their gardens for growing food and medicine at home, people were convinced, and convinced each other, on a massive scale, to prioritize growing one singular plant in their home space.
So much so that the largest crop in the United States is lawn grass, ya’ll!8. There is 3x more lawn grass (usually Kentucky Blue Grass) being grown (and irrigated, and fertilized, and sprayed with pesticides) than CORN!!! This is especially incredible to me after spending a lot of time in the midwest this summer, where the corn and soybeans go on literally as far as the eye can see.
V. Scott Jenkins provides more context:
“Collaboration between the USDA and the U.S. Golf Association on grass research made it possible to grow lawn grass in all regions of the country. As a result of the widespread adoption of the front-lawn aesthetic, the twentieth century has witnessed a radical change in the makeup of America. Forests were cut down and marshes filled in throughout the North and Midwest, while in the arid Southwest mammoth irrigation projects made former deserts green. Millions of acres of lawn grass have created a savannah from coast to coast…
Our environment is threatened by the overuse of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Scarce water resources are fought over in the West as some homeowners claim that it is their right as Americans to water their lawns.”
This is completely wackadoodle!!
And also, I can’t deny that I have enjoyed the pleasures of a soft, luscious lawn. When my family moved from living in a neighborhood in town, where we had a grassy front yard (tho pesticide-free and cut by my parents with a push mower) and an aspen tree that I loved to climb — to the high-desert mesa, of dry clay, cacti, and a lot of other pokey stuff, I protested and mourned with all the angst of the teenager I was becoming. I liked the softness of the grass, the ability to lay about and do cartwheels and play games, run around barefoot…to enjoy the leisure time afforded by our white middle class existence. Besides the physical comfort, having a lawn also made me feel “normal” which was particularly important to me at that time in my life. But the cost of maintaining this flavor of normalcy and comfort is devastating, a slow creeping real-life horror movie.
Because as pleasant as it can be to relax on a “springy, emerald-green lawn”, so much has been sacrificed, actively destroyed, in order for the U.S. to become this nation of lawns that it is today. Whole people’s lives and lifeways, generations of cultural knowledge and deep relationships with land, and the many beings that called that land home.
85% of wild plant species and more than 70% of cultivated crops9 rely on pollinators (mostly insects, birds, and bats) in order to reproduce. Due to a variety of factors including habitat loss and pesticide use, these pollinator species have been in decline globally, which in turns threatens our own food supply. According to the World Wildlife Fund, there has been a catastrophic 73% decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations in just 50 years (1970-2020) and 39% in North America specifically, also due to habitat loss and other factors of human decision making and value systems.
Meanwhile, Americans suffer from epidemics of loneliness, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and what journalist Richard Louv calls “nature-deficit disorder”. An undercurrent of unnameable grief. Some deep awareness that we’ve severed ourselves off from the wild forests, the creatures that move through them, with them, through us — and have found ourselves more and more alone.
See also: Is Your Beautiful Lawn Killing You? [10:18]
In his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Francis Weller writes:
“What was meant to be a far-ranging identity riddled with intimacies with wild iris, stellar clusters, earthworms, and humans has been whittled down to the narrowest hub. We exist in a state of isolation, cut off from an encompassing community of others. We often feel flattened under the weight of domestication, which smothers the heat and howl of our wild selves. We feel eviscerated, made tame by rules and conditioning that blanket the world with uniformity and mediocrity.”
All of this makes me wonder about those immigrants (some of them my ancestors?) that diligently carried their dandelion and plantain seeds across the Atlantic Ocean to press into the soil of this unfamiliar continent. At what point had their descendants decided to stop intentionally tending to these plants, and instead ripping them out like they were agents of the devil himself? When had they decided to choose the perception of wealth and social safety over arguably, their own health?
What else had they given up, in order to belong, to feel like they were succeeding in this “new world”? What does one have to cast aside in order to maintain the illusion of being pure and in control?
Perhaps one’s own wild unruly soul, as Weller suggests? Sovereignty over your own mind and heart? Moral integrity? The ability to feel at peace and belonging in the strange wholeness of the world and its mystery?
It seems that so much of this comes back to the instinctual - biological - need to belong and be accepted by each other. A lot is sacrificed in order to fit in. I notice it in myself often. When I’m alone I’ll feel a deep conviction to change my behavior in a particular way that deviates from the norm, but once within a group of people, there’s a doubt that sometimes creeps in — a very visceral fear of being rejected, misunderstood, “canceled”. I notice myself hesitating, frozen on the precipice of breaking the pattern. Not belonging, or being left out is painful — probably one of the most painful experiences we can have as humans.
So many decisions come down to survival and perceived security. There is a comfort and a feeling of safety in being “normal”. But at a certain point, that safety is hollow, it’s an illusion. The comfort isn’t worth the cost. We’re not safer when pesticides are leached into our water supply, when we can’t swim or drink from the rivers. We’re not safer when there are less snakes, amphibians and insects that share our home, when migrating birds, bats, bees, and butterflies don’t have habitat to make a nest, or when the plants that they’ve traveled hundreds of miles to feed from are mowed down, yanked out, or poisoned.
The more species that can’t sustain themselves due to habitat loss and the concentration of contaminants in our ecosystems, the less safe (and healthy) we humans are. The more we rely on greed-sickened corporations and political leaders to tell us what to buy, think, and do, the less creative and resilient we are. Biodiverse, dynamic, free-willed systems are naturally intelligent, strong, flexible, and in the best interest of all who depend on them (aka everyone, and everything). Incidentally, this fantasy of mono-culture purity contains the seeds of its own destruction.
When I think of the narrative that says that dandelions & “weeds” must be destroyed at all costs in order to protect a perfectly uniform, manicured lawn, it sounds like the same logic that has been applied to justify the persecution of groups of people, throughout history, and still today. Again, the way enemies are invented to further the pursuit of a myopic ideal that ultimately only benefits a few on a surface level. The public torture and murder of “witches”, women who freely shared their plant-centered folk medicine, (and threatened the power structure of the church and for-profit medical system).10 The murder, betrayal, and forced removal/relocation of first nations on this continent from their ancestral homelands. The creation of “Whiteness” as an antithesis to “Blackness”. The insidious portrayal of Jews by Nazi Germany and the Holocaust it made possible. The destruction of Gaza and genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government and U.S. weapons. I think of the people that live on the literal margins of society, pitching tents along railroad tracks, under bridges, on the medians of the freeway (all places where wild plants also find their home). I think of how I grew up with a vision of success that I later realized was quite narrow, that there are so many other ways to live a life than the one that was being sold to me. I think of how I obsessively stuffed myself into a shell of a person in order to fit the part of the “pretty girl” “the nice girl” “the ‘chill’ girl” throughout middle-high-school and college, and gradually became so disembodied that I no longer knew who I was without other people’s perceptions of me.
Is the weed monster so scary because he reminds us of what happens to those that don’t fit in to a manufactured ideal? A representative of the outcasts, the misfits, the “others”, those that step out of line? Who can’t breathe inside the little boxes we’ve come to expect each other to stay in?
And so…the haunting - the plague - the torment - the obsession with eradicating any evidence that we don’t fit in.
———
All this talk of weeds reminds me of when I stopped shaving my legs as an experiment, back in 2015. I did it to find out if I actually thought that having hairy legs was gross and uncool and unfeminine, or if that was just what I’d been led to believe.
For context, a decade earlier my mom had tried to bribe me with $500 if I waited to shave my legs until I was 18. I was in 7th grade and there was absolutely NO WAY I could stomach being the only girl on the basketball team with hairy legs. We’ll never know how that $500 could’ve been spent.
During the experiment I tried to see my leg hair objectively, putting aside the judgements I’d accumulated. I sometimes wrestled with discomfort, self-disgust, and a vulnerable feeling of exposure while letting this part of myself run wild, but eventually I realized that keeping up the appearance of perpetually smooth legs didn’t need to be a priority for me anymore. The maintenance had always felt annoying and stressful (like my mom had tried to warn me it would), and made me feel like I was constantly fighting a losing battle with my body. I don’t necessarily find my haired legs more (or less) beautiful or sexy than shaved or plucked ones. They are just part of me.
Part 5: A PARADIGM SHIFT
“When Americans recognize that lawns are artificial, cultural artifacts not provided gratis by Mother Nature, then it may be possible to consider alternative landscapes that are less costly in terms of resources and pollutants.” - Virginia Scott Jenkins
It appears that this recognition that VSJ speaks of is in the works, as social standards have been slowly, but surely, shifting to meet the moment.
Our handy historical gardening timeline says that in the early 2000s, “Edible gardens came back to the forefront — and the front yard — as Americans became more health-conscious and the desire for fresh, local food grew. In 2009, the White House planted its first vegetable garden since WWII. By 2013, one-third of all American households reported growing food.”
An Anti-Lawn or “Kill your Lawn” movement has gained traction in the last couple decades with a growing number of people reconsidering the utility and concept of lawns, and instead experimenting with arguably more creative, practical, interesting, useful, and beautiful ways to relate with these spaces. One option of course, is to simply do nothing, and let the wild return on its own, which is apparently a trend now called the “Lazy Lawn” or “Shaggy Lawn”.
See also: Do Americans Hate their Lawns enough to get rid of them?
Nationwide there’s also been a trend of people digging out their grass in order to plant native wildflowers and pollinator gardens, as public attention for the necessity of pollinators has grown. According to this article on LawnStarter, “49 cities have their own local ordinances for pesticide-free zones or restrictions. Connecticut and Maryland were the first two states to ban neurotoxic pesticides called neonicotinoids back in 2016. Now, 8 states in our ranking have restricted these substances that are harmful to bees.”
Xeriscaping has become more of a standard in drier climates, like in the Colorado river valley where I live, as it makes less and less sense to use our dwindling water supply to maintain an inedible crop.
Minnesota has a program called “Lawns to Legumes” which offers grants and educational resources to people who want to start pollinator gardens in the yards like this one I saw the other day:
While trying to finish this essay (!#@$%^!), my mom sent me an article that just came out in the NY times (“The Era of the American Lawn is Over”) . Apparently something is rumbling in the zeitgeist, and perhaps we are now reaching a critical mass. The author of the article, an American now living in Scotland, says that these days “many British homeowners embrace wildlife or no-mow gardening — an approach that reduces labor and chemical use, celebrates aesthetic untidiness and welcomes biodiversity.”
What if most lawned neighborhoods converted the majority of their green space into gardens for native plants, and food, and medicine? And the standard of being in solidarity with ones neighbors was to share the harvest? And to simply enjoy the beauty?
It seems like people’s quality of life would be better, and more interesting?
Here are just a few examples of community-led projects that are already in the works:
• “No-Mow May”
• Homegrown National Park
• Crop Swap LA
• Food forests
• Guerilla gardening
• Plantlife (UK)
• Wild Ones Natural Landscapes
• Healthy Yards
• shout out to Carbondale’s Dandelion Day
• And again, Mergoat, who is sadly no longer making their magazine but has landscaping business focused on “native-inspired vengeance horticulture”
• There is even a reality show called “Kill Your Lawn!” which I am saving for a rainy day.
It’s encouraging to see this move towards an appreciation of a different kind of wealth, one of variety, delight, originality, and reciprocity….that makes room for the unexpected, and creates opportunities for re-enchantment.
The standard is changing, and it’s coming from the ground up. You might say it’s a “grass roots” movement…A reminder that social change starts with a few who take the risk of challenging the status quo and in doing so show the rest of us what’s possible, what we didn’t realize we were missing.
Okay, so back to…Danny.
Gazing at his lush little face also brought to mind the mythic “Green Man”. Maybe you know him.
Part 6: THE GREEN MAN
I was confident I knew what the Green Man was until I started researching him and learned that I pretty much did know but also didn’t really. Which was the vibe of a lot of the articles and videos I came across. His image was familiar to me, but I wasn’t really sure why — I guess I’d just seen him around.
From what I’ve been able to gather from my wanderings on the internet, the general understanding is that the Green Man is an archetypal entity that is depicted as completely or partially green, and often has a face and body made of leaves and foliage. He’s associated with nature’s cycles of death and rebirth, as well as mystical/hidden knowledge, the fairy realm, mischief, revelry, etc. There are many theories about him, his origins, and what he symbolizes, but no one seems to really know for sure where he comes from or why…he continues to be an enigma, just out of grasp.
According to this excellent video by StoryCrow, “Green Man” is a term coined by the amateur historian Lady Raglan in the 20th century, to link together various depictions of this type of leafy green wild man that have been shown up throughout ancient Europe, the Middle East and India in architecture, artwork, myth and folklore.
He could be a kindred spirit of deities like Bacchus and Pan, the ocean god Oceanus (with a beard and hair made of seaweed), mystical Islamic figure Al Khidir (“The Green One”), Yama - the Tibetan lord of death and keeper of the “Wheel of Samsara”, and Indian threshold deity Kirtimukha. He’s also associated with legends like the Green Knight, King Arthur, and Robin Hood, and is likely inspiration for the Ents (tree beings) of Lord of the Rings, and maybe even the Jolly Green Giant.
The Green Man today has emerged as a modern Pagan symbol, and an adoptee of the environmental or “Green” movement. According to the comments below the StoryCrow video, the Green Man has appeared to a lot of people during psychedelic trips — mysterious eyes gazing at them through a face covered in leaves.
Oh, the relief of green — the color we associate most strongly with the Earth, with abundance. Green, the color of the heart chakra. The color the human eye can see more variations of than any other color11. Green, the color my grandma said she was enveloped in when waking up from her nap the other day. Green, a color that I’m learning has been used to signify death, as well as life.
In many depictions of the Green Man, or “Foliate Head”, the foliage is not just part of the face, it appears to be devouring it, growing up and out of the mouth, ears, and eye sockets like a plant might grow through a corpse. I like the idea that this symbol could represent the earth reclaiming what is hers12, slowly but surely pulling her children back into the underworld to be broken down and rematerialized.
I wonder if part of the appeal of the perfect lawn is that it demonstrates that one has (at least temporarily) managed to keep those relentlessly wild forces of nature at bay, the creeping, crawling tendrils of that self-willed, “messy”, unencumbered chaos void.
With no weeds to curl around our toes, and no pesky bugs to gnaw at our flesh, we can attempt to maintain the illusion that we humans ourselves are not, also food, and will not, also die.
Perhaps Danny has resurfaced from deep within the collective unconscious through The Lawn Company’s elusive graphic designer as a version of the Green Man, a reminder that each of us will be reabsorbed by the land in one way or another. A terrifying thought, and a reassuring one (depending on my mood).
Could it be that actually the whole time these monsters that haunt us are just trying to help us, and impart vital information? Pointing us toward a wound that’s itching for attention, in order to heal?
Francis Weller offers the following:
“When we open ourselves and take in the sorrows of the world, letting them penetrate our insulated hut of the heart, we are both overwhelmed by the grief of the world and, in some strange, alchemical way, reunited with the aching, shimmering body of the the planet.
We become acutely aware that there is no “out there”; we have one continuous existence, one shared skin. Our suffering is mutually entangled, the one with the other, as is our healing.”
In a different story, Danny the Dandelion could be a hero. Reminding us of the power the earth has to heal us, and teach us. The availability of sustenance and medicine. The necessity of wildness. The resilience, and stubbornness of freedom. The trickster, continually foiling the plans of control freaks everywhere. The outcast that teaches us what it really means to belong.
~
And with that I raise my glass to the weed monster: may he go forth and prosper.
I didn’t know how to respond to this
25 y/o me stoked to be with the Pope at Bioneers:
Contemplating the creation of realities we take for granted reminds me of theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker talking about imagination and the “physics of consciousness” (starting at about 1:07)
The Apothecary’s Wife: The Hidden History of Medicine and How it Became a Commodity by Karen B. Gervitz, The Burning Times documentary
A feminine counterpart of the Green Man motif (Mother Earth?) seen on a walk thru the alley the other day:
Ahhh!! How I find social norms ever so fascinating and frustrating. I loved your distinction, about halfway through your essay I believe, between a healthy cultural standard and a shallow or empty standard contrived out of fear and attempt at control. I love to play along the trails of where such widely accepted behaviors and concepts come from. Thank you for providing such intriguing context and information in your wonderfully-paced story of mystery.
Who knew that as I kid I had a love affair with Wood Sorrel--I was constantly sucking on it in our unfertilized backyard. It calls to mind that my natural state has always been to forage - as a kid, constantly seeking new wild berry patches in northern WI with my parents. These days I live in the Twin Cities, and nothing gives me more joy than finding wild berries and plums throughout the urban landscape. Thank you for this amazing essay, Rachel B!