I glanced across the street and saw a disturbing sight. There was the truck for the chemical lawn service once again in our neighborhood. The gloved employee was dragging out a hose to spray another lawn into perfect greenness. My sparrow would never find a feast of dandelion seeds on that lawn. There is no garden debris for nest making in the perfect bark piled around all their trees. And any robin pulling out a worm is going to get some unwanted chemicals in their diet. The gloves on the hose sprayer and the warning signs posted on the lawn after spraying can't be read by the birds.
How in the world did we come to this way of thinking? When did the diversity of nature become so unwanted? Who has decided that a sterile uniform looking yard is pretty? And if you really want to do some scary reading, and I encourage you to do so, start googling the dangers of the chemicals coming out of those lawn care trucks. We need to change our mindset fast. We are poisoning nature and by default ourselves. I don't know if I can change my neighbors minds. But I know I can can take care of the one small spot of the earth I am directly responsible for - my own yard. So yes I am the house with the yard full of dandelions, the tree line with areas of overgrowth and a garden in the front lawn. Call me eccentric and my yard unruly. I call it diversity.