United Nations has announced 2010 is the year of biodiversity. Today the area I live in is cutting the grass on uninhabited lots around the inhabited lots in suburbia. In the process killing who knows how many birds and their offspring, for the holy sake of not getting the cursed dandelions and other non-grass seed spread to the sterile lawns.
Arguing (by my wife) that the timing was horrible for such an action did not change anything. Last year neighbors already complained about other neighbors if "weeds" were allowed to spread to their lawn. Well, you will get fined if you do not cut your own lawn, no matter how much you like wild flowers.
When I moved from Denmark I prayed I had escaped this madness of millimeter-democracy. But no.
Yes, I understand most people have been raised to think a lawn has to be flat and contain only the desired and approved plants (to remind them of nature... mastered). Everything else must die! Some find this pretty - I can understand this too, I just don't. Personally I appreciate finding an orchid growing wild in my back yard (or the un-occupied neighboring lot). Watching ferrets hunt game around the house. Or having wild swallows nesting in a hill in the yard. That gives me a lot more pleasure to me than a plain green lawn. Watching the kids, they do not know what to do with such a boring lawn – they run off to climb a hill in the uninhabited lots or go exploring in the rich fauna there. Here land owners even cut down birch trees fighting to get out of the ground, just to buy one in a shop and plant it a few meters to the left.
In the name of the Year of Biodiversity, I send out a plea to my fellow humans: how long it will take us to break the habit of killing everything in our surrounding and replace it with exotic plants we often have to fight for to keep alive or overtaking the local plants?
UN Secretary General Welcome Message for the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity from CBD on Vimeo.
2010 International Year of Biodiversity
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