Where the grass is greener

I SAY IT loud and proud. I'm a conscientious objector in the lawn wars.

While my neighbors fawn over their yards with fertilizer, pesticides, and weed whackers and spend countless hours trying to cultivate a greensward worthy of left center in Fenway Park, I've given up. I've decided to let nature take its course.

On Saturday mornings when the lawn mowers sound throughout the neighborhood like rolling thunder, I grab another cup of coffee and dawdle over the sports pages.

The experiment began 11 years ago, when my son was born and I decided I would no longer allow my yard to be a toxic waste dump filled with chemicals concocted to grow a lawn that didn't belong there anyway. The fact that I live in a pine grove that makes growing grass a Herculean effort only stiffened my resolve.

The result? The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but in my yard it's a virtual rainbow of weeds, wildflowers, and indigenous groundcover.

In early April, when the neighbors' lawn begins to glow green with cultivated grass, and they begin charging across the yards with their fertilizer spreaders, my front yard is still as brown as mud. "I'm waiting for the crabgrass crop to come in," I tell my wan-looking neighbors.

But there's so much more than that. A patch of purple and white violets flourishes in the side yard in early spring, and the stand of sage-colored milkweed beside the lamppost attracts goldfinches and orange and black monarch butterflies. The pachysandra with its deep emerald leaves and creamy white flowers eventually fills in the brown spots on the lawn. And in midsummer I even get to feast on the wild blueberries that cluster at the bottom of our tallest white pine while sniffing the aroma of sweet purple clover.

This summer I took the greening of the old homestead up a notch. I bought a hand-push lawn mower at a yard sale for $2. Not because I wanted to save the planet, but because my gas-guzzling self-propelled mulch mower broke down.

Of course, it's a little tricky to operate; God knows how you're supposed to sharpen the sucker, and I wear hiking boots so I can kick start the blade barrel when it gets stuck on a twig or a pine cone. My defunct CO{-2}-belching behemoth roared right over them, but the push-mower freezes up. I've perfected a stutter step and hop on my left foot while kicking the barrel blade with my right and continuing along my path. It's a man and mower pas de deux that might have been choreographed by Mark Morris.

But now I am pure.

I snicker now when I smell power mower exhaust wafting through the tall pines of our suburban settlement. And don't get me started on lawn tractors. When did we become such a nation of wimps? Could it be that the drivers need to cultivate something, no matter how useless, as a salute to their agriculturalist ancestors? Or are they just plain lazy? (Many of these same people get in their sport utility vehicles and drive 1 mile to the gym to get exercise).

And what of the noise? Why must we shudder in their sonic backwash while they wear iPods to drown out their own mowing noise?

As I walk behind my gently clicking push-mower I can hear the call of the chickadees and the buzz of the cicadas in the shrubs. Toads and garter snakes escape easily from my path. The cat doesn't bother to skitter away, nor the dog who sits happily sunning himself while I skirt his tail. And my wife is able to take a one-hour nap with the window open above the backyard.

It takes a little extra effort, of course, but I consider it part of my exercise routine. And if the weeds get extraordinarily high - and some do - I break out my handy scythe. I don't know how much gasoline I've saved. The 5-gallon plastic jug I fill up each spring is in the garage draped with spider webs, but I know I'm making the planet better one mow at a time.

Tom Long is a freelance writer.