Lawnmowing and Freedom

"Lawns and yards may indeed exist to fulfill some innate human love and need for beauty but more likely they still announce the dignity and responsibility of their owners. Proper householders keep their livestock from their neighbor's land and eradicate crabgrass before it overruns abutting lawns."

Stilgoe, John. Conclusion, pp. 542-543

This point of this reading isn't necessarily about lawns or the way that people should keep them, but I think the freedom to keep ones own grass the way they want it is very important too.

In suburbia, there are generally certain "guidelines" for a person's lawn - official or not. Most members of a neighborhood usually frown at an unkempt lawn; one that hasn't been mowed in a few weeks, one with dandelions blooming, the crabgrass beginning to creep in. 

There are even what I like to call "grass vigilantes" when it comes to the appearance of a lawn - for instance, my mother hurt her leg a few years ago and wasn't able to move around, and I was away at boarding school. She had recently moved to a new town and didn't know her neighbors. Obviously, as she wasn't able to move around very well, the lawn went unmowed for about a week. One morning, as if by magic, the grass was cut. While this was a nice gesture, it could have easily be done as an insult.

In AP Environmental Science (or APES), our class, in addition to the AP syllabus, read the book Second Nature by Michael Pollan. I believe it's the first chapter that deals with this kind of censorship on the freedom of speech (or freedom of grass).

I think that people should be able to keep their lawns however they feel like keeping, and if that happens to be the (rather lazy, but admirable) idea of restoring it to natural prairie, they should be able to without their neighbors "vigilante-ing" all over their property.
They're creating their own landscape. Everyone's personal tastes differ, and lawn vigilantes shouldn't impose on those who like things a little chaotic.

Just sayin.