What is the deal with the obsession on keeping grass cut?

Is it only in America? I drive around and see people everywhere cutting grass. Tractors, lawnmowers, riding lawnmowers, weed eaters, edgers...they are everywhere. Grass is kept extremely short at homes, businesses, alongside roads, highways, sidewalks.

I work at a large business campus where there are constantly people out doing yardwork. The grass here is PGA tour putting green quality. The company has laid of thousands of workers lately...but the grass cutting MUST go on? I dont get it.

Think of the money and time that could be saved. The sheer amount of resources that go into cutting grass are staggering when looked at from a national level.

So I say...would it be so bad to just let it grow to its natural height? :confused:

Don´t despair, it´s the same here in Germany and even worse in Britain (ever heard of English lawn).
I really do not know why people are so obsessed about it.
It is enough if you cut it once or twice a year, but no, every few weeks someone needs to cut the damn lawn around our house. In public spaces it is also done fairly often.

Stop the waste, let the grass grow!

Grass is nice. Mine NEEDS to be greener, more full, more weedless, ... than the neighbor's. I won't let my daughter play on it.

Are you obsessed with grass?
StrangeStrangeStrangeStrangeStrangeStrangeStrange

yes, i am. its my secret fetish. PH LIKE ID REALLY TELL YOU
o shit, you were talking to him wernt you? YEAH IM THAT STUPID
forget i said anything. HAHAHAHAHAH SILLY

i dub thee carl spackler.

why are you such a moron?, stop clinging to wes you clinging cligeé (oo more é words)

Ever seen Caddyshack (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080487/) ? He is the greenskeeper.

Yeah, that was cool. Always loved it :D

sooooo?

(that seems like a very poor film)

im not really a grass fetishist.
highlight the post if your that McSilly.

The grass is cut around my building once a week. That is one horrible obsession.

what do you mean? ok good one you got me dorkboy. i shall cling to wesdom cus i am bullheaded. and stupid.

come on, your not that stupid.
hehehehe yes you are...

He thinks it is so damn funny to write in white color.
If you mark the text you will see this moron INSULTING you.
Just like he always Insults everyone with these hidden messages.

why did you stop whiting things?
if you are stopping so will i.

um morons. look at my post up above again. got choo jackarses

clever, reeeeeeeeeeeal clever.
NOT (O THE MIGHTY WIT) SARCASM

a good portion of the people i get on the bus with every morning are employed as landscapers. many of them don't speak english very well and have no other way of supporting their families. there are some large business parks in this area with beautifully manicured lawns and trees and every morning there are people out there mowing, edging, trimming, etc. it's a shame that the employees of those businesses don't spend more time in the gardens at work enjoying all the work the landscapers do but even if they don't i think it's a beneficial expense. it's keeping these people in jobs. where else would they work otherwise? their job, as uneducated unskilled (possibley illegal) immigrants, is as important as mine.
on the same token, i'm going to say that the janitor is the most important position in my building. i'm thankful that they are there everyday doing thankless work keeping everything so clean for us. i wish they wouldn't address me "good morning miss" in broken english because i respect them more than anyone...it's not appropriate to call me by a title.
someone very intelligent said to never look down on anyone's job because you'd probably be fired the first day at it.

Yea, the greenskeepers/cleaners at my job are all immigrants also. They have the best job security in the place.

In the UK it is mental. No matter what, on the first sunny morning of the year EVERYBODY is out mowing their lawn at like 8am. They even mow the grass that is near their property...

It's just crazy

Believe me Thor, it´s the same here in Germany.

I can't believe it though. Sunday at 8am...SUNDAY!

It´s even worse in winter when the snow falls, at 6 am people will start clearing it away. Every morning you hear the scrape of metal on the streets because of their shovels. Compared to this, it is not so bad when people cut their lawn at 8 am on sunday, I am just in bed for two hours so it´s no big deal :D

I'm spending $1500 to have a sprinkler system installed. Green grass is goooood!

I lived in Boulder, Colorado, for a little over a year. I noticed that many yards there were completely overgrown with grass and weeds and whatever else. Given the general cultural climate of Boulder ("hippy town"), I assume the belief is to keep things as natural as possible and mowing the lawn is against nature. Growing up in the South, where lawn care is a sport, if not a religion, it was a tad disconcerting to see that.

In many ways, it's definitely a "grass is greener" kind of thing ... he who has the nicest, most well-manicured lawn wins the prize. Sort of like the folks who religiously polish their cars.

In a practical sense, an overgrown lawn can be a breeding ground for rats and other vermin. Weeds can be problems with people with allergies (well, so can cut grass, for that matter), and it can be difficult to do anything like play ball, lie in the sun, or simply walk across the lawn when the grass is knee deep. Also, there's just something aesthetically pleasing with having a nice, green, nonshaggy lawn.

Well, I still would only cut it twice a year, that´s sufficent I think.
(Depends on the kind of grass I suppose)

I mow the lawn, as we say here, once a month which keeps it at a nice height for the first 2 weeks but the last 2 weeks it does look a wee bit shabby. Here no one complains about it though and we really aren't that anal retentive about keeping it mowed and manicured every 2 weeks or whatever those grass junkies do. Grass should be kept at no more than 10 inches because weeds then tend to take over the grass and the lawn becomes infested with weeds and kills the grass. All that remains is a weed ridden lawn that looks like a garbage heep has taken over. I believe that where anyone lives you should try and do as the residents do there as to not spoil the conditions that were present long befor you bought into their neighborhood. Respecting ones fellow residents is always one way to insure good standings with those that surround you.

What is it with us humans and our obsession of cutting the grass?! It's just silly. I thin we cut grass just to buy lawnmowers

Grass was an invention of capitalism I believe.

I'd like to have a goat, it would eat the grass and keep it low plus provide me with good goats milk! They won't allow farm animals where I live though. :(

Just say it's your grandmother and that you take great offence at anyone who calls her a goat! And the grass, it's a 1960's thing...

...it's bullet proof.

LOL!..... :D

As an ametuer suburban landscaper (*cough*), I also find the obession of keeping grass short, frankly, stupid. I have one customer who tells me he doesn't care how many times the grass gets cut during a week, he just wants it looking good. That means he wants to pay $250-$350 a month just to have me keep his grass short (and I charge half of what "professional" landscapers charge).

There was one time where I "forgot" about a customer and their grass grew to about 7 inches tall. They called me up, fired me of course, and they said their neighbors were going to file a complaint to the police about how my customer was neglecting their property.

Now after speculation, I think that the element of competetion between home owners in suburban areas is part of the obession of cutting grass. There is always a critical view of appearences in suburbia. Your appearance reflects what type of person you are. Your lawn is important in that respect. Stereotypes of that old crazy lady with 20 cats, who leaves her lawn to grow like Nebraska wheat fields, is sort of there.

Another way you could view the obession, still dealing with outward appearances though, is property value. If your neighbor's lawn looks like shit and you are selling your house, it's important they keep a good appearance of a good neighborhood for money's sake.

It's could also be a sense of completeness, having your grass green, cut, looking sharp, coming home from work, chilling out...life is good no?

Whatever the real reason is, I'm sure it's very superficial. I like the "lawns" of the shore, ones that are filled with sand and have bunches of long, wild grass scattered. It's less maintainence and looks better in my opinion.

would it be so bad to just let it grow to its natural height?
Here's an example of how biology is inaccurate without taking ecology and natural history into account.
Grasses natural height is short. Just as a fishes natural state is wet. You can look at it biologically and put a fish on the table and because the table is sterilized and you have gone to great lengths to not interfere with the fish you will think you are letting it be natural. But it will die, because it needs to live in water. Thats where it evolved and it is its life line.
Grass evolved with things eating it, if things aren't eating its not in its natural state.
Mowing the lawn is closer to natural than letting it grow.

Why we have this obsession with a mowed lawn is a good question. Its something I myself have become, not obsessed with, but interested in. I want a nice mowed lawn, its an instinct that has just sprouted in my psyche as I have become an adult. Never cared when I was younger and having my parents force me to mow the lawn would make me whine 'who cares if the fucking grass is long, god damn it!'.
But now it is satisfying to look over a well groomed lawn. As it is for most adult human beings. There's no real logical reason to like short grass, so obviously its instinctual;
Once upon a time, short grass in our territory meant herbivores were abundant. Short grass is a sign of a well stocked territory. So now in our little territories we like to have the endless illusion of abundance. We are the same animal that used to gaze over the african plains, I think we've come to subconsciously associate short grass with relative comfort.

Grass was an invention of capitalism I believe.

nah. grass is spawned from pain, suffering, and destrustion.
it is the tool of satan.

if i remember correctly, the first grass came into exsistance in hte wake of that mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.

thus, it spawned from
pain, suffering, and destrustion.

DESTROY THE GRASS!!!

ps. drawler whyd you change your avatar back, was chaos not working for you?

the lat time i saw anyone mow the lawns here was a few weeks ago, but it is the middle of winter

where do you live, its summer where i am....
does grass grow in winter. i can remember.

As an ametuer suburban landscaper (*cough*), I also find the obession of keeping grass short, frankly, stupid. I have one customer who tells me he doesn't care how many times the grass gets cut during a week, he just wants it looking good. That means he wants to pay $250-$350 a month just to have me keep his grass short (and I charge half of what "professional" landscapers charge).

Yeah, good money can be made in landscaping which most don't realize. My dad used to have some people mow his backyard, sometimes trim some hedges, and pick up leaves. All that took around 15-20 minutes between two people and the price was 80 bucks. And when I found out the price to cut the grass near his business.. which was nice grass but there wasn't a ton of it.. probably 10-15 minutes worth, it cost $600!

My next-door neighbors when I was younger were landscapers and they made a lot too. A lot of people look down on landscapers as if it's a bad job, but it's good. I was thinking about getting into it. The only reason why I didn't is because there's so many darn landscapers in my city, heh. But hey, I should still do it for at least another source of income. Not even an hours work and I get $50-100. Just doing one lawn/backyard a week would be cool with me. I don't think it'd be too hard to find 4 customers a month, heh. And I have all the equipment to do it too because my grandfather was a gardener (just for himself). He has a portable airblower, electric hedge clippers, a mower, and that thing that cuts the space between grasa and concrete.

Hmm, thanks for the thread for popping this idea back into my mind, heh!

- N

so thats wat happens when those annoying 5yr olds that run cutting people lawns get promoted. btw logically unsound, i live in NZ directly opposite europe, christams is the hottest part of the year