Why Mow?

This is a paraphrase of Why Mow? from Michael Pollen. Mr. Pollan works are very inspirational. I would like to endorse his new book in Defense of Food.

"Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants"
Avantgardner

I tired of the endless circuit, pushing the howling mower back and forth across the vast page of my yard, recopying the same green sentence over and over: “I am a conscientious homeowner. I share your middle-class values...

…The more serious about gardening I became, the more dubious lawns seemed…I became convinced that lawn care had about as much to do with gardening as floor-waxing, or road paving. Gardening was a subtle process of give-and-take with the landscape, a search for some middle ground between culture and nature. A lawn was nature under culture’s boot.

Mowing the lawn, I felt like I was battling the earth rather than working it; each week it sent forth a green army and each week I beat it back with my infernal machine. Unlike every other plant in my garden, the grasses were anonymous, massified, deprived of any change or development whatsoever, not to mention any semblance of self-determination. I ruled a totalitarian landscape.

~Michael Pollan, Second Nature