(Letter to the Editor - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

All over the Mid-Ohio Valley, you’ll hear the hum of lawn mowers by mid-morning. Perfectly sane adults wake up, pour their coffee, and head outside to mow grass they don’t even use. Some do it twice a week. Most will admit they don’t enjoy it. And yet they do it. Religiously. Why?

We don’t farm our yards anymore. We don’t hang laundry. We don’t graze animals or grow food. But the mower still comes out. The noise, the gas, the time… all so your property looks like every other chemically dependent, biodiverse dead zone on the block.

That patch of land behind your house? It used to do something. Now it eats. It eats time. It eats fuel. It eats every dandelion before a child can blow on it. It eats clover that used to feed pollinators. It eats what little freedom you have left on your weekend.

You don’t have to become a farmer. But you could stop pretending your lawn matters more than your food, your soil, or your neighbors. Turn off the mower. Plant something. Let the clover grow. Grow tomatoes in the front yard. Or just do nothing at all and give nature back ten feet of edge.

If your first thought is “Well, my HOA won’t allow that,” maybe the problem isn’t your grass. Maybe it’s who you let control your land.

Sean Carlton

Carlton Hill Farm

Parkersburg