No Mowing In May, Maybe

I FIRST HEARD ABOUT IT on the radio, which, since I lack Cable or dish or internet, is the way I learn about most things. I'm Hooked on NPR. The idea originated in Europe, if I'm not mistaken, and spread across the ocean to Appleton, Wisconsin, a city of about seventy five thousand. A total of about several dozen cities in Europe and the U.S. are "participating" in "No Mow May". according to which participants pledge to refrain from mowing their lawns dkuring the entire month of May, to give insect populations a chance to profilerate among the tall grass, weeds, and wildflowers. Obviously, with the internet, at least one person in every city in teh world of more than a ffew people will find out about "No Mow May". It may be that by the time the idea really gets rolling and millions of people ready to participate - May will be over. Well, maybe next year. I heard about the idea early in the month, and decided to participate. I made it all the way to May twelfth before I changed my mind and cut my grass, part of it anyway. The rest I will do within a day or two, doubtless. In consolation I was assured by at least one intelligent person that had I truly waited until June to cut my grass, I would have been confronted with a veritable jungle. Still, I think its a great idea. Indeed, maybe it would be a great idea to mow our lawns less often in general, to let the grass get taller, and not mind a few weeds and wild flowers here and there. We humans must remember the somtimes inconvenient fact that the outdoors, all of it, is supposed to be, so it seems, insect habitat. Wipe out all insects off the face of the Earth, the human race, and every other species of life, plant and animal, goes extinct. And that is preciesly what we, humanity, are doing; wiping out the insect populations worldwide, with our industrial activity, our lovely carpet-lie front and back yards, and so forth. I have a fairly big yard. Maybe, jsut maybe, I can set aside a small part of it as wilderness until June. I like the idea of designating a small part of my yard, - and I'm guessing that I have just a bit less than a half acre - as wilderness habitat, and just leaving it alone. When I bought the land and built the house all those years ago, it was a vacant lot, with basically nothing growing on it. I went to work changing that immediately, and now all these years later I have a yard full of mature trees, shrubs, and thisk grass, with a few weeds thrown in for the insects. My days of fighting weeds and insects are over. It might be refreshing to walk, bike, or drive through your averagne American suburban neighborhood and see a vista of overgrown yards with flourishing wildlife rather than acres of slick smooth green carpet surrounded by browm privacy fences with graying warped boards.