Last week I had a lovely lovely interview with Andrea Gordon, a reporter at the Toronto Star. She was talking to folks about green parenting. I think she may have squeezed in two or three whole questions during our conversation, and I have the feeling that her ears fell off after she hung up the phone with me. Green parenting is an issue that’s close to my heart.
We talked (er, I talked, a lot) about how being a parent gives us the opportunity to create new citizens of the world, and how having kids puts things into new perspective.
Sometimes kids force us to question our own habits, don’t you think? They constantly want to know WHY, and you, as the parent, have to explain things to them on their level. And if you explain something often enough you end up getting down to the very kernel of the issue in very simple terms, and sometimes it’s at that point that you realize that what you’re trying to explain is totally banal.
Take for example, lawn care. Lawn care, if explained at a level that a three or four year old can understand, sounds totally ridiculous.
Mark and I used to use pesticides and chemical lawn fertilizers when before Emma and Sarah were born. We stopped after they came around, and taught them to stay away from any lawn that had a little white sign. (Ddid you know they’re required by law? Look up Regulation 914 of the Pesticide Act.)
Unfortunately, when the girls were small they’d just point at our neighbours houses and yell things like “POISON!” And “STAY AWAY FROM THERE BIRDIES BECAUSE YOU’RE GOING TO DIE!” Mortified, I’d hustle them away hoping no one happened to be looking out the window. But you know what, it’s true. Our neighbours were poisoning their lawn, and our environment, and for what?
This, from the Sierra Club:
“Pesticides have been linked to many different types of cancer in humans from breast cancer (DDT) to non-Hodgkins lymphomas and soft-tissue sarcomas (phenoxy herbicides). Chronic low-level exposure to pesticides has been linked to low-grade symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, nausea, and mental confusion.
Linkages have also been identified between home and garden pesticide use and leukemia and brain cancer in children. A National Cancer Institute study in the U.S. indicates that children are as much as six times more likely to get childhood leukemia when pesticides are used in the home and garden.
A recent study published in the American Journal of Public Health (February, 1995) found elevated levels of cancer in children where pesticides were used in their homes and yards.”
While we’re walking by a lawn with one of those little white signs the questions come fast and furious. Our conversations always went something like this:
“Why do those people put that stuff on their lawn?”
“Because they want to have a nice looking lawn.”
“Why?”
“Because they like it. And they think it’s pretty.”
“Why?”
“Because they do, that’s all.”
“But they’re putting poison on it to make it green.”
“I know.”
“And kids can’t play on it.”
“I know.”
“And it might make them sick if they do.”
“I know.”
“So why do they want to have a nice green lawn?”
And thus it begins again.
People want to have a nice lawn because it’s a sign of prosperity. It’s kinda crazy, isn’t it? But it didn’t spring from just anywhere.
“When most of the necessary tools and types of grass seeds became readily available, the average homeowner was now able to grow a lawn of their own if they wanted. As of yet, there wasn’t a real big demand for green lawns in the front yard. It wasn’t until The American Garden Club stepped in. Through contests and other forms of publicity, they convinced home owners that it was their civic duty to maintain a beautiful and healthy lawn. So effective was the club’s campaign that lawns were soon the accepted form of landscaping. The garden club further stipulated that the appropriate type of lawn was “a plot with a single type of grass with no intruding weeds, kept mown at a height of an inch and a half, uniformly green, and neatly edged.” America thus entered the age of lawn care.”(via)
We no longer weed n’feed our lawn. We don’t use any chemical lawn control. But if I did, I’d have to ask myself WHY I spend so much time and money on dangerous chemicals in my very own backyard. A perfect lawn is purely cosmetic, a fashion statement, if you will. So what’s the point?
At the recent Home & Garden show I picked up a pamphlet about White Dutch Clover, and how to use it as a replacement for grass. So I’m ready to seed a large section of our lawn and see how it works out. I’m pretty excited about it.
Now if only all this snow would melt…
