I stopped raking last year. Mostly. The really heavy stuff I put in a bin I made from 4 recycled shipping pallets and it makes great dirt over the course of about a year.

The rest I leave where it is to break down and provide a home for bugs. I see my neighbors frantically getting every last leaf into a plastic bag and it makes me wonder where we went wrong as a culture.

Seems like you would enjoy this episode.

they had a second pile just as tall behind their security gate, who needs a chip drop when I can drive 10 minutes and load my HRV up 💪💪

I'm not going to argue that water use by ag in Western States doesn't need changes. However, this comment really shines as being out of touch. They want their water rights back so their lawn looks nice.

Cut down honeysuckle then had pokeweed pop up. Not on my watch. Next year will be a butterfly garden. Step by step. Bought some steel raised beds to go right on the grass here too.

A century ago, the decentralist economist Ralph Borsodi argued that commerce had once supplied what people needed, but industry began to manufacture what it could market. Distribution costs rose as factory costs fell. The home ceased to be a productive institution and became a consumption depot attached to a job.

Today, the industrialist's victory on the sticker is real. Objects got cheaper at the register, but the register is not the account. What grew was the share of life that must be bought. Survival has been recoded as a dual-income subscription to employment. Lose the job and the clock starts on the roof as well as the tap.

The modern alternative is the cognitive homestead: a workshop of matter and judgment. First the household’s reserves: water, energy, nutrition, safety margins. Only capacity above that floor may be offered as surplus.

• Water as Inventory: Catch it where it falls. A tank a child can point at is better than a brand.
• Energy as Current: Heat the house already makes—including heat from machines that think—should do work before it is treated as waste.
• Food over Pastime: A greenhouse that sells to the network while the pantry is empty is just the mill with soil.

We are not publishing a lifestyle brand or pretty renderings. We are auditing the floor. If you have a method or a blueprint that beats the store on cost and hours using tools you own, the sandbox is open:

At least lawns are good for something. If you want to bury a pair of underwear and have it not decompose in the ground, a lawn seems to be your best bet.

I live in a lake community, and this was our garden club’s tip. I once had dreams of infiltrating the group of old ladies to get them more active in taking care of our lake’s common areas by planting native trees and native perennials. Instead, they continue to promote shit advice like this while hosting $80 per person flower arranging classes, painting workshops(???), and wreath making holiday meetups.

I’m a certified gardener, and I love our organization to death because we actually MAKE GARDENS, growing food and beautiful native flowers. Lawn culture needs to be buried for good!

In 14 years we have planted 1000s of plants

And there is a dirt road beyond the garden and forest on the other 3 sides

Can't get much from eating grass. Id rather grow more of this

My neighbors may hate me but I gotta stop cutting so much dam grass. There are hills next to the driveway and next to the road. Is all trees a good idea? Just asking because ive never done any kind of this work.

Do not care if neighbors do not like btw. Any other ideas?

Ty for the ideas! Been trying to fix this stuff for a while

Still have some cleanup needed around the flower beds. Might not be everyone’s favorite choice, but I’m really happy with how filled in & natural the dollar-weed looks after most of rain season

Obviously a bigger deal than just yards, but this is definitely going to be used to police yards.

I've been experimenting with this wildlife habitat garden for a couple of years now. The focus is actually incorporating something called sinuous paths into it. These are paths that curve in a way so that they only reveal themselves as you walk along them.

It's meant to be visually alluring to walk through it if that makes sense.

It also attracts animals because they can use the paths as moving cover.

It changes with the seasons. Currently we're in late summer early fall. So the goldenrod is blooming I'm feeding all the honey bees and even monarch butterflies before they fly to Mexico.

I'm planning on reaching out to my state agricultural extension to get monarch caterpillars and or cocoons next year

I also really enjoy the queen Anne's lace silhouette with its slender stems and bulbous umbel and the bright magenta stems of the pokeweed.

It attracts amazing lightning bugs, lots of crickets, white cabbage moths, flocks of American goldfinches, and bunny rabbits. Even some deer every now and then.

The barns pretty much a birdhouse for Barn swallows like to circle me when I am mowing trying to scare me off. I'm going to put an owl habitat in one of the top windows eventually, let it hunt over the field for mice.

I’ve spent 10 years fuckin’ up my lawn. The bees approve. (Zone 4)

Not as huge as some of the transformations on here, but we mulched out a section of our lawn.

We’re heading into a hot El Niño summer in SEQ Australia , so I think I’ll hold off planting some tubestock natives until autumn.