Here’s one for the STUPID file: Woman arrested for letting her lawn get brown

I’ve lost all respect for the environmental movement. Don’t get me wrong. I care about my environment. I do my best not to pollute, I try to be responsible about how I effect mother Earth. But I am so sick and tired of apologizing for being a human on this earth. Environmentalists are so busy making humans into evil destroyers they’ve forgotten something. We didn’t invade from outer space or come from some place other than earth. We are PART of the planet we live on. I refuse to feel guilty or apologize for that!

@Beadknitter: You are right, we are part of the planet we live on. But does this necessarily mean, we have to destroy it?

This is both ridiculous and sad. I’m glad to live in a country where we don’t have these laws. If I don’t water my lawn and it gets brown, nobody gives a hoot. And that is just as it should be IMO.

er….

disgust with the world, that is. Not Hanna.

That is nuts. There was a gentleman in my hometown who planted a wildflower meadow in the front of his business rather than a lawn. It was beautiful and required no watering as it was made up of all plants native to the area. Of course, some nitwit had to complain about the “weeds.” The business was located between an empty used car lot and a plumbing supply store with no lawn, just a stone parking lot. At first the city told him he had to mow it down, till a petition was submitted with hundreds of signatures on it from folks saying how much they enjoyed it.
By the way, I think we need to start a drive to replace grass with Creeping Charlie as the official lawn plant. You don’t have to mow it, it smells good when you walk on it, it has pretty purple flowers, and you sure as heck can’t kill it! Apparently it also has uses as a medicinal herb and in beer making. Who knew?http://landscaping.about.com/cs/weedsdiseases/a/ground_ivy.htm

This is just another in a continuing litany of massive stupidity among government bureaucrats of late. First there was the cutting down of the native plant garden in Toronto, then a woman in Buffalo is probably going to be charged for HER yard, someone else in Colorado has grass that’s too long (see Garden Rant and Ketzel Levine’s Talking Plants blogs for details)…If it wasn’t scary, it would be hilarious. How do these idiots get elected and make these sorts of bylaws, anyway?

Yes, someone in the old part of Houston had a beautiful wildlife garden the city removed too. Lawns are so bad for the environment. She was doing us all a favor by neglecting it. ( By not wasting water or using toxic chemicals to keep it green. )

Last I knew I did not live in a police state and you were not required to carry id or id yourself to police. I do not think she was under any legal obligation to id herself to the officer? Anyone know different? Have things changed that much?

Okay. Let’s be legal-minded here for a second (which is not always the same thing as logical). It’s true that she was not arrested directly for having a brown lawn–but at the same time, had she not this brown lawn, there wouldn’t have been a PO on her doorstep grabbing her by the arm and asking her who she was.

Perhaps, when she went into the house, she was going to get some ID to show him. Not very likely, from the way I read the story, but it’s possible. Or, being a 70-year-old woman home alone and faced with a PO, she could well have been alarmed and overwhelmed and scared and intimidated.

According to the law, are you allowed to grab someone like that if the person is simply walking away? Does that constitute resisting arrest? In any case, when a 70 year old falls and hits her nose, there’s the potential for much more damage than when a 30 year old falls and hits her nose.

And now, for the whole green lawn in a desert thing. Allow me to ask this question: WHERE OH WHERE IS THE CITY OF OREM GETTING ALL THIS WATER FROM? I’ll tell you where. Dams. Dammed rivers. Which has created all manner of fucked up wildlife and ecohabitats and whatnot. By comparison:

The City of Denver requires that at least ONE of the faucets in your home be a water-saving/aerating faucet. (and this was the last time I was there, in 1993. I suspect the laws are more stringent now)

The City of Spokane actually LIMITS the number of days per week and the number of hours per day (not to mention which hours) you can water your lawn.

Can we say California?

The bottom line is, an ecosystem can only support a certain amount of life. At the root of it (pun not intended but very ironically appreciated) the amount of life it can naturally sustain is in direct relation TO ITS WATER SOURCES. We can mess with that, artificially draw water from other sources for a limited amount of time, etc…..but the bottom line is, that water’s got to come from somewhere else, which therefore has an impact on another ecosystem. To water LA, you need to drain Colorado. To water Orem, you need to drain….???? Somebody.

Apparently it’s this little old lady.

And seriously. In the middle of a DROUGHT? They don’t have droughts in the DESERT. It’s called THE DESERT. The people in Orem who decided this phenomenon of having no rain was a drought are the same people who think lawns should be green in Utah. Hello. Lawns should be green in Utah for about ten minutes after it rains for that week in April. Then it’s okay for them to turn brown. Because that’s what non-native “lawn” grass species do when you plant them somewhere that has insufficient water for it.

Otherwise, it would grow there in the first place.

Duh, duh, and duh.

Thank you, Hanna, for getting me into a lather once again.

There really is no ‘live and let live’ anymore is there? I think it is human nature to ‘one up’ each other and that applies to the environmental movement also as evidenced by the necessity to list our contributions of earth friendly actions. We cannot go back to the 16th century and no one wants to do they? I like the washing machine, the indoor plumbing (although a composting toilet sounds like a good idea), the car and yes, the computer. All driven by fossil fuels. Let’s work together to get our politicians ranting and hollering for tax credits for alternate energy sourcing. And, let’s be tolerant and supportive of those less enlightened which includes all of us at certain given moments.

I’m in Qld, Australia in the thick of drought and
anyone that waters plants in their front yard has a
little sign that says *we use tank water or
recycled water* to prevent the neighbours on the
block from having a few loud things to say about it
. I’m not even game to wipe my car over with a
wet rag in view of the neighbours.

No one has a green lawn…we don’t use hoses or
sprinklers, wash the outside of houses or hose
cement..all against the law. We can only water
our gardens 3 days a week before 7am and after 7pm.
And you wouldn’t want to be doing too much of
that either as the goal is 140L per household. But goodness, its enforced by city council
(but mostly by public opinion alone)…not police.
And anyone over seventy who broke those laws
because they couldn’t lug buckets or follow those hours ….sheesh….
you wouldn’t have anything to say about it.

I can’t even remember what a green lawn looks like.

Wow, and in another part of the world you can go to jail for NOT watering your lawn.