fuck lawns (fuck lawns) fuck them very very much

Yep, electric "Roomba" style lawnmowers exist.

Husqvarna 115H! It's down to like $600 now. This is going on its 3rd year doing my backyard, and its fking amazing. Once a month I trim the perimeter, but otherwise I dont have to mow most of my yard now, its always the same perfect height, the grass seems much happier with it too.

One of my neighbors has an electric one and it's shocking comparing how quiet it is to the gasoline one that came with my house

A small robot apocalypse!

And before the petrol mower there was the mechanical reel mower. My grandfather had one of these beauties. They take a bit of extra care and maintenance (sharpening, cleaning, oiling) but they do a great job and are much easier to push around than you’d think! Super lightweight and much safer around kids and pets too. Plus they’re basically silent compared to those extremely loud engine varieties (petrol and electric)!

The post says you "you drive it" while you could say that for a push along it seems odd wording.

Before they had electric, that was the only type. It's not fancy.

True that they did exist in the past, however unless you've got an old one they're around twice the price of electric and more expensive to run. But, more than that, it points to you having enough garden to need petrol.

Those are two entirely different tools with entirely different purposes. Sickles are good for harvesting small parts of plants, not mowing large swathes.

I used to have about five acres and would only mow the area around my house. But when I went to sell it the realtor said I had to mow all of it because it looked "messy."

Dumbasses want to move out to the country and live in a damn suburb smh

Ah yes, let's take the low life area and make it 0 life

This is quite nice in desert areas, but doesnt work well for areas like Florida where if you dont spend hours weeding or edging religiously, you'll end up having to weedwhack your lawn because the grass and weeds have still grown, but now your mower has turned iinto a rock flinging machine with very dull blades

A yeard can be great space for kids to run and play, but still, fuck lawns for the most part. One basketball-court-sized lawn per couple blocks is plenty sufficient for kids. A soccerfield per 5 miles, and a major sports field per 10 miles...

Folks should let their yards be what the yards are in the wild.

In Florida, that means pine/oak forest with palm fronds. Maybe small grassy garden if folks want a spot to hang. But grass for the most part is shaded out by trees and covered by pine-straw and leaves.

Residential half-acre-plus fertilized lawns are stupid AF.

Maybe was cool in the 1950s when lawncare was a handy mode of wealth redistribution for a healthier economy, and no-one had thought of the negative environmnetal impacts.

Lawns used to be a big flex specifically because it took crazy labor to do; lords would show off how many gardeners they had under employ. Now folks are flexing in how they can kill everything including their wallets, free time, and planet

Push mowers are superior for small lawns.

Mowing lawnbots are the future for lawncare.

Nah, throw your mower in the bin and let your yard return to nature.

worry about it starting every season

Honda. Any mower with a Honda engine will start first time every time

You gotta sharpen the blades, my man, and keep the two moving parts oiled, this can be done at home with a very small can of oil and a large file that will fit in your sharp utensils drawer.

The manual options are ancient - like a sickle, or a scythe or clip by hand with garden shears bent down on your knees for hours. But fuck all that, you’ll want an electric trimmer for edges.

Two things: I’ve edged my grass with pavers fir the most part, and for the small bits that don’t have that, long handled edging shears you can use while standing.

The other bit is that I don’t have a rolling lawn that needs a riding mower; my grass is interspersed with local plants/shrubs/trees. Only takes 10 minutes to fully trim the grass bit during the season where it’s growing.

We have an edge made with weed mat which we can mown over so the mower can do it all

Change the narrative. Tell them their property value will plummet because lawns were shit fads that are going out of style.

Homeowner’s Association moment

If people see more value in a patch of drying grass rather that a productive garden, how could they be trusted with enough money to buy a house ?

Those electric mowers have been around for 50+ years.

Recently bought an electric plug in mower. 100 ft extension cord and it can reach every end of the area I keep mowed.

Was considerably cheaper than an equivalent gasoline operated one and I don't have to store/worry about gas. The cord is a very minor inconvenience comparatively.

I tried buying a plug in mower like that around that era. But the electric at the house we rented at the time was awful, so every time I plugged in the mower, the breakers would flip. Had to return the thing unused and bummed an old gas mower instead.

A plug in mower? Hopefully the cable was orange or something, that sounds risky.

My great-grandparents had an electric mower in the 80s. I never saw anyone else with one until the 2010s.

I currently only have hand powered yard tools aside from the gas powered lawnmower that came with the house. As long as you stay on top of the pruning hand tools get the job done. I discovered a 20+ foot tall tree hiding in a larger pine when I went to pull a vine off of it and still managed to chop it up with the handsaw for normal city collection. Poured some stump killer on the stumps and one full spring later (I did this at the end of winter when it was nice and cool out, and everything was still dead/hibernating) only one stump shows any signs of life out of the 4 trees I chopped down, and it might even just be a new shoot.

That's exactly what grows out wild in my backyard here (which is against the edge of a greenbelt / drainage creek bed) - no intervention needed.

I agree with you, a bat box or a birdhouse for insectivorous birds.

A battery powered thermacell insect repellent will work in the meantime to keep many insects away while you are outside at least.

The only tree is marked to be cut down because it is dying/dead, and we are just waiting on the landlord to get to it.

Global insect biomass has declined 75% since I was born. And a big part of it is people who don't want insects on their property - reasonably, as the person you're responding to points out - and manage their lawns to deprive insects of habitat. And there's so many more people in the world now than when I was born, and correspondingly less habitat for insects. And everything else.

I've considered it, but they all want to mow it down to nothing and I like my grass longer