Why Lawns Must Die
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 มิ.ย. 2024
- Why lawns must die, explained. Support OCC and get 20+ bonus, ad-free videos by signing up for Nebula: go.nebula.tv/occ/
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In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, I look at why the American lawn must die. Specifically, I look at the grass lawn's history of class exploitation and settler colonialism and how that ties into the American lawn culture we see today. The lawn began in Europe as an elite status symbol that was tended and mowed by peasants freshly forced into wage labor through the enclosure of the commons. The turfgrass lawn was then exported to colonial America where it was used as a tool to terraform indigenous land. And in the post-WWII suburban boom, the lawn soon became a symbol of white conformity. The turfgrass lawn though has a huge environmental impact. It's the biggest crop in the United States by area and requires a massive amount of fossil fuels, fertilizer, and chemicals to upkeep. Even if you don't want to tend to your lawn, some towns require you, with the threat of jail time to mow the grass. Ultimately, the grass lawn is a tool of capitalist settler colonialism that is exacerbating climate change and the climate crisis.
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:53 - A Brief History of Lawns
4:28 - The Lawn Was (And Still Is) A Tool of Colonialism
6:01 - Lawns Are Fueling Environmental Destruction
8:07 - A Future Without Lawns
9:27 - Sponsored Message
11:32 - Outro
I use Epidemic Sound for some of my music: epidemicsound.com/creator
Some footage courtesy of Getty Images
_______________________
Further Reading and Resources: ourchangingclimate.notion.sit...
#Lawns #Colonialism #ClimateChange
💡 Do you have a lawn? What would you want to replace it with?
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Not one word about the capitalists you only attack "white suburbanites" whatever that means
@@Vv-ys4vw Climate change is a complex web of numerous contributing factors, all of which we have to tackle if we’re going to avoid impending ecological catastrophe and build a more sustainable world. One of the biggest contributors is capitalism, and OCC points this out in his other videos (not to mention the fact that the settler colonialism critqued in this video is deeply intertwined with capitalism), but white, suburban “lawn culture” is clearly an important aspect too. Don’t get so caught up in your anti-capitalist activism that you fail to recognize other social/environmental ills.
As for what I’m hoping to replace my lawn with, to be quite honest, the answer is nothing! I’m trying to transform my backyard into a more natural space that isn’t so wasteful. I don’t need a perfect lawn when I have the natural world right outside my door!
Someone has been seeing some tweets from Lee Carter 😏
Or perhaps you both red the same article or watched the same clip🤔
Or maybe it's a happy coincidence in timing 🤷♂️
At 8:41 there is a scene with a specific picture of american suburbs i have seen a lot of times already. What is the history behind it as its used so often?
Replacing a large portion of it with native plants, trees, and shrubs for native pollinators, birds, etc and honestly... less maintenance! 😂
Getting arrested for not mowing your lawn:
only in the Land Of The Free!
So much freedom
So happy to live in Germany Right now. We don’t have such a law.
Living in America 🎶🎶🎶🎶 the next line should says: Only if you cash and good lawyer man!!!!
@@timjesse8432 you have many other draconian laws. Germany is notorious about rules and order and looking from afar it scares me.
@@fhm21 nah there are laws and regulations for pretty much every single smallest thing you can think of, but neither draconian, nor actively enforced most of the time.
Making it a crime to not mow your lawn is the most uniquely American thing I've ever heard
And Texas to boot? Where's this freedom of deciding what the front of your house may look like now?
@@robertchmielecki2580 well the US is of course the "Land of the Free", so long as you exercise your freedom exactly the way you're told to. Like a good middle class white suburbanite
Not even in Sweden are you able to force people to do that. Only when trees are becoming a danger could you be forced to do something about it.
@@sunesnigel Same in Britain. It's mainly dangerous trees that raise issues, and sometimes hedges that are allowed to grow absurdly large and cut out the light.
There are a few 'recommendations' like not putting certain invasive plant species into ponds if there's a possibility that flooding might wash them into nearby water courses. I think that advice is quite commonplace though.
@@debbiehenri345 yes hedges that hinders sight in crossings are not allowed to be over a certain height to ensure road safety.
The requirements for cutting off light to your neighbor is insanely high and almost impossible to achieve.
We've become so addicted to throwing people in prison that we're willing to put the elderly behind bars over grass height. What dystopia is this
The same one it’s always been long since before the USA
What dystopia? Ours.
Seems like the only people they want to throw in prison are the harmless old people, the rapists and murderers are out on the streets, doing what the do.
If your next door neighbor decorated their lot with old junk cars and tires, and grew invasive weeds eight feet tall I bet you'd be singing a different tune.
@@SeattlePioneer 1) That's a massive step up from letting grass grow a little higher than usual. You are comparing apples to oranges. Even in the wild fields near my house, weeds don't grow to be 8 feet tall. They top out around half that height.
2) Old cars and tires are not natural. They are man made. Again, apples to oranges.
I grew up in a house in California. My mother replaced all the "regular" lawn grass in our front yard with two types of native California grasses. They were decently pretty, but their big advantages were that both species were drought tolerant and fire resistant. Kind of important factors for California.
My mom explained to most of the neighbors what she'd done and most of them approved, in part because it was during a time when water rationing was being implemented in our county. However one neighbor decided that because our lawn wasn't a "proper" lawn that he would do his best to get my mother into trouble. So he called the cops on her. Multiple times. And each time they said she needed to uproot her grass because they said her lawn was a fire hazard, because she wasn't watering it enough. During a water ration.
And each time my mother had to patiently explain to them that her grass was native grass approved by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for private planting AND that said native grass was the fire resistant and therefore the opposite of a fire hazard. And that the reason why she wasn't watering as much as a normal lawn was because these plants were drought tolerant AND they weren't SUPPOSED to be watered as much as non-native grass.
Whereupon the cops of the day would sheepishly say that it was probably okay and then leave. Until an entirely different set of cops would pop up a month later with the same spiel. Eventually it stopped but it was honestly one of the most absurd things we ever had to put up with. The fact this one neighbor got into his head that everyone was supposed to conform to what HE thought a proper lawn should be, never mind that said lawns were and still are water guzzlers and that's idiotic when you're living some place where water is at times a fiercely scarce commodity
Sounds like your mother was doing a lot of educating, I hope some of the officials went home and rethought their own landscaping a little bit
The best thing is that most lawns are literally useless. No children play on it, no adults sit or lay on it, nothing. It is literally only used for aesthetic reasons.
Especially front yards are absolutely useless.
There was another video about this, someone did an informal study where they just walked around suburbia and counted how many people were actually using their gardens, in like an entire neighborhood where thousands lived they only ever saw a couple of children outside at most. They compared it to inner cities where the playgrounds were almost always filled with children and adults, and it's obvious when you think about it, playing with your siblings gets boring eventually but playing with other kids is way more fun. Similarly the reason why adults would hang out, outside is mostly if they're meeting other adults and you do that at a park not on your lawn.
@@Tyler-zw4kq how private can a lawn really be? Anyone can still see what you’re doing
@@Tyler-zw4kq So why not just get rid of front lawns and keep small backyards?
Don't worry. capitalism and the free market solve everything!
@@Tyler-zw4kq Replace them with food gardens, native flowers, trees, grasslands...literally the things recommended in the video.
as a biologist, i absolutely agree! more plants and less removal of plant material means more water retention and better soil quality! i've finally managed to convince my parents to let me take over their garden to make it more ecological and less labour intensive. after all, why would you spend so much of your limited time keeping a manicured garden when you could use that time to persue other things that make you happy instead?
What were the top changes you made that have the most important water retention characteristics?
@@Yo3j2442 the most important thing was trees, thanks to climate change we get droughts during summer and only in the shade of the trees do plants manage to survive. Though if you want to plant undergrowth make sure the tree isn't surface rooting (if it is, it's best to put a thick layer of mulch above the roots before adding plants) and that the plants are at least somewhat shade tolerant. The shrubs we planted (mostly berries) also provided food for the local birds so it's fun to see em hopping around in the morning.
Edit: i'm now also working on making temporary ponds (called wadi in dutch, no clue what it's called in english) that help with rainwater inflitration. They're basically shallow ditches that catch the rain instead of letting the water run off. Though we haven't had em long enough to say if it does anything mayor.
@@pay1370 good luck with your project and don’t strain too much out in the heat! I really appreciate the shared details, and now I want to learn more. You da best!
@@normandy2501 maybe you can section of some borders for native flowers and shrubs? That way she can keep the suburban look while bringing in a bit of plant diversity and hiding spots for native animals.
@@Yo3j2442 thanks! I've only been putting theory to practice for a few years now so i'm still learning a lot myself, good luck on your endeavours as well!
Americans about the mask mandate: that communism
Americans about threat of incarceration over 1 inch of grass: this is the american way
just shows the people who call everything they don't like "communism" aren't actually anti authoritarian, as they are all for authoritarian measures that have already been grandfathered into our system.
Decency and aesthetics vs Lack of oxygen . yep the same thing. And yes effectiveness is yet to be proven while the reduction in o2 and the rebreathing of your own expelled Co2 and bacteria is proven. Go ask little children with bacterial tubercolosis due to masking ahhahhahahha. I wish you to be still masking and boosting, you don't wanna catch a cold.
both are communism lol
Nice straw man Pedro.
@shr00mhead oh no, they'll deduct 10 points from my argument in "debate competition" and I'll never make it to finals
NOOOOOO
I'm a forest technician. I started earthing up my lawn when we moved here 20 yrs ago and it was war with the city and my neighbours, now they are up to speed and I am left alone! Great article, feed the bees! 😘
Next I would expect you and your neighbors to require that EVERYONE "earth up their lawn," whatever that means.
Thus are fashions imposed upon others that have different values.
@@SeattlePioneer shut up lol. victim complex for a lifestyle of sterile mediocrity and pollution (chemical&noise). worth only an eyeroll
I've never mowed my lawn. When I fist moved to my house I planted the front yard in sunflowers. People loved them and no one complained. Unfortunately while they look great in spring and summer it turned into a dead tangle of weeds in the Fall and winter. This year I built raised garden beds and planted miniature fruit trees and berry bushes. It needs some refining to look good but it makes great use of all the sun it gets. Hopefully it inspires others. The county recently passed a law forbidding HOAs and local governments from punishing people for having eco-friendly landscaping.
Good idea is to moved lawn when grass start blooming.
USA passed this law? I cannot seem to find it anywhere.
@@wednesdaysbliss1 No, the local county
@@jennifers7412 my b, I read COUNTRY 🤣
@@wednesdaysbliss1 if only it was country. like Big HOA would ever let that happen.
I thought Americans were all about freedom. Why are they butting their noses into other peoples gardens?
The usual excuse is protecting property values. “How will I be able to sell my house for 300% what I paid for it if it’s next to that untrimmed slum house of yours?! I’m calling the cops!”
They also outlawed sliced bread once. Need I say more?
Because of sprawl and social injustices and inequality, I have to bike 8 miles round trip to access my 100 sq. ft. of community garden. There are literally thousands upon thousands of sq. ft. of useless grass in the fiefdoms of the $1 million homes to the east of my 650 sq. ft. apartment. But I cannot use them because they are defended by threat of police violence, and thus I am forced into wage labor for my food, just like the peasants long ago.
because you can't shoot up the grass in a lawn with ar15
@Adora Tsang freedom is not an illusion in USA. Freedom is nonexistent.
I bought a house with a huge lawn, and I hate it so much. It blows my mind that people water their lawns. When there's a drought and it all turns brown that means I save 3 hours a week of mowing.
I've planted so many trees, but by the time they shade all the grass, I'll be dead
Most people cut all the trees down around their houses because " they don't want to rake leaves "
Why don't you just live in an apartment without green space?
@@alexanderebersberger4650 having close neighbors would be a waste of my stereo system..... I measured my priorities
@@JBG1968 I hate that in my sunburned neighborhood 4 60 year old 3-5 foot 1-1.5m wide trees were cut down in my neighborhood Court and now we don’t get shade in that area.
I’m always amazed by this phenomenon in America about your pristine lawn at the front. Just rip it up put in wildflowers, and a few evergreens for the winter. Job done.
What kind of person wants to put a 75 year old lady in jail because she didn't mow her lawn??? Also wow definitely an interesting topic that I knew nothing about, awesome video!
probably Republicans, if i’m being perfectly honest lol
A Home Owner's Association. I bet her house is regulated by an HOA.
Well y'know cops
Some people are just buttinskies. But also, as long as the lawn is seen as the standard, people do have to worry about what a neighbor with an space that's seen as unkempt is doing to their property value. Some people would be fine letting their neighbors be, but if they plan to sell their house some day, they're caught up in the system, too.
Its not the cops. Its the lawmakers,
We planted raspberry bushes in my front lawn, they immediately start to spread out on their own and if you go look you can see all kinds of bees there pollinating the flowers, bees which weren't there when we had just grass before. In the future I would like my whole lawn to be a big garden
Raspberries are a nice choice because they're at least hardy and spread freely even if their yield is poor, and as you say they feed bees. They might spread more than you want but you can always cut them back to the edge of your path.
I keep a lot of Raspberry canes too. I planted Thornless Blackberry, Tayberry and Loganberries among them.
I know people like to grow them in patches, but I regulate mine into parallel rows so the long fruit canes can be tied to form tunnels (makes picking fruit much easier for little me.
Under these tunnels, I am gradually planting Bluebells to take advantage of the light shade. They are fantastic for bees at the start of the season, and will compete very successfully with other weeds and grass.
My wife and I did it, people always compliment us on our garden!
You can always add clover seed to your grass as well. It is much more drought tolerant than typical grasses, and bees love it too.
Very nice
Great video overall, I appreciate what you presented and it makes good sense to me. In reality what became the "lawn" goes back hundreds of years earlier.
Going back a bit farther than the point at which you started, in medieval times, the trees and brush was cut down around castles as a measure of military defense. With no foliage cover, your attackers had much more trouble to sneak up on you to sack your castle. This was the dawn of the "lawn".
So, it's an element of the "Castle Doctrine?"
The reason why I like this man's approach more than anything else is that he recognizes that you can't just be like "you are doing bad so do what I say". He really takes the time to present alternatives and understand the incentives of the way our economic system works and unless you change those incentives you're not really going to get any kind of real change.
The megadrought in the West right now is incentivizing people to do something other than have a lawn next to their homes. For years, a lot of the many suggestions have revolved around replacing them with native plants that use *much* less water. Now, that push is acceleratiing. I think there is real opportunity to turn a bad situation into something good.
Xeriscaping is the right way.
the uptights will try to stop a meadow with these repressive laws
I’m in Utah, and yes there’s a big push for water conservation. However, 81% of the water in Utah is used by agriculture operations, the vast majority of which is alfalfa. Cattle feed.
Every lawn in the state could disappear overnight and it would barely make a dent in the water problem.
Just some food for thought.
@@16vjohnny finally someone with logic.... Same could be said about EVs.... Everyone in the world could have an ev vehicle right now But only a small percentage of CO2 emissions will be depleted. You got country's like China and industries like the Airline industry are the the biggest emitters of CO2. but right now they are unregulated.... But everyone keeps insisting you must buy an EV to save the planet.......
@@MiguelGarcia-vj7oo EVs definitely aren't the only answer but, according to the EPA, transportation makes up 30% of emissions with 82% of that from road vehicles. Switching from gas to EVs centralizes the issue and allows for a reduction of emissions by changing how the power is generated.
How is arresting someone over a lawn not considered a "cruel and unusual" punishment
The punishment is not cruel and unusual, just the reason of arrest
@@murilo7794 arresting someone is a punishment, you have been taught to believe it is not
Being arrested is a HUGE punishment, there a LOADS of job you can NEVER have with an arrest record, and they don't erase false arrests either. There are MANY countries you can never visit with an arrest record, depending on what it was for.
@jeroid123 prison is exactly what I was referring to when I said "the punishment". I assumed you had a basic notion of text interpretation.
You don't get a warrant put out for you for just not mowing your lawn, she missed her court date. Go have your day in court and you don't have to worry about being arrested.
That is an interesting topic! Thank you for this video!
Here in central Europe it is becoming more and more popular to have a garden made of concrete and stone! The people build a massive driveway out of concrete for their SUV and the front yard is simply made of gravel. Sometimes there is a single bush or small tree in the middle and that`s it! There is nothing green, just grey. And some people use chemicals to stop weeds growing through the gravel... Is this a topic in the US as well?
Our garden is a little bit "oldscool", we have a lot of trees, bushes and fields where flowers for the insects are growing. So all in all it is very colorful and wild, just some small bits of lawn inbetween to walk on easier. People need to know, that a garden does not need to be perfectly clean. It is better for nature to have some wild areas and hedges, where animals can nest and find food. Greetings from Germany!
I never understood how these dead gravel and stone gardens became a trend in the first place. They are so lifeless, boring and empty, oftentimes literally the only living thing in them are a few conifer bushes. Even a lawn is probably be better for the environment compared to a gravel layer.
I really hope natural and wild gardens with lots of different plants growing freely become a trend again, they look better, are much better for nature and insects, and can provide food if edible plants are planted.
Own a scythe, I’ve mowed once in the last month. I love living in the country for this reason. Use to live on a corner lot in the middle of the city. I had 2 front yards and no back yard. Worst decision of my life. My lawn was useless. Kids couldn’t play in it due to the location and lack of any fence to keep them safe from traffic. Mowing every week taking 15-30mins of my time (thankfully it was a small lawn.) we actually spend time in our lawn here, which ends up keeping the grass shorter where we are. It’s not mowed so short so it doesn’t come back so tall or very fast. I trim my grass little bits at a time now and only when I start to notice certain plants are seeding that I don’t want in my yard. Their clippings get added as mulch or get thrown on a compost. Front yard is now a massive garden, something I believe everyone should at least try once.
As someone who absolutely despises having to mow a lawn, especially as I continue to become less physically capable of doing so, I really appreciate this video. The lawn is the most vapid, pointless, and wasteful thing people can have on their property. I only do the bare minimum to keep the back yard from growing out of control, and I don't bother watering or fertilizing it. If I have the money to do so one day, I want to rip up my entire back yard and replace it with a garden and/or a meadow of native wildflowers.
You also highlight another reason why lawns are bad, it's an enormous labor burden to place on disabled people just to fit in to the rest of society. It's similar to how autistic and ADHD people are forced to spend enormous amounts of energy on hiding their true selves to avoid discrimination. So I think we can very much see this as another aspect of ableism.
@@hedgehog3180 i have those mental health issues i agree and you make a good point
Cut it once or twice a year, start of spring & start of september. That way you'll benefit wildflowers and pollinators without it becoming overgrown or unmanagable. Best to check locally for cutting timing but it shouldnt be too far off
"The lawn is the most vapid, pointless, and wasteful thing people can have on their property."
But of course you would never think about telling your neighbors what they can and cannot have on THEIR property.
You don't have to wait to have the money to do thr entire thing all at 1 time.
Start small. With vegetables that you eat most of. Then when you harvest those, you will be able to save just a little bit more money. Which you can use to continue growing your garden. After a while, you will see. You eventually tore up your whole yard and replaced it with the garden you wanted. But you didn't have to wait to do it all at once.
Best of luck on you endeavors and I hope you a happy gardening.
I’m a Civil Engineer, and you’d be surprised (or maybe not) at the amount of people who don’t understand that certain areas are designed to NOT be mown (Rain Gardens, “Open Space” meadow/buffer areas, etc.)
I also personally think that a front yard filled with plantings looks much better than a grass lawn, though the initial cost is much higher
Are there some low maintenance ideas you could link to? Currently taking care of the lawn takes so much time and I would like to find better solutions for my yard.
BTW if this helps, the area is South Florida
Not to mention how much work it takes to upkeep a garden. Much more work than mowing a lawn.
In recent times, animals were "mowing" the grass.
@@michaelslifecycle
If you want to have ornamental or vegetable gardens they are going to require weeding and watering. Personally ornamentals should be primarily perennials with a small amount of annuals for season long color. Vegetables require just as much or more work than ornamentals.
Not if using seed
This script was perfect!! Great framing, no inflammatory language, perfect touch of stats, showed sources, and solutions
Yep, super enlightening right?
I had a lien put on my house for not mowing the grass while I was out of state for the summer. Apparently the city has a "nuisance ordinance" regarding blight species that are the first to colonize neglected yards, or if your grass was over 13" tall. In retaliation I ripped out all the grass and replaced it with native pollinator varieties and maintain a woodland garden between my and the neighbor's house. We also started planting really tall (8ft+) varieties of Sunflowers adjacent to the sidewalks and literally anything that would make for good seed-bomb material. When people walk through the neighborhood they always comment about how beautiful the plants are and the crazy amount of bees and butterflies we have compared to the completely dead areas the neighbors have.
Its not much, but its honest work.
I love it when quality TH-cam creators make videos I want to make, so that I don't have to. Great work here.
One thing that really needs to go away is setback requirements: the requirement that houses are set back a minimum distance from the street. Setbacks, if used, should be a meter or two, not the 10 to 20 meter setbacks that are common today in American and Canadian suburbia. There's no reason to have such mindless and obsolete regulations on our books that force people to maintain massive front yards.
That would be fine if you live in a place were there were no cars. The houses across the street from me were pretty close to the road to begin with but they came through and made the road a 4 lane now the road is about 12 feet from the houses. A few years ago a truck went through a house and killed a person that was chillin on the couch.
I hate mowing the lawn, a lot, but it's just so ingrained into our culture... It's not fun, especially when it's hot out... Another reason why I'm starting to hate my suburban life.
@@krystelhardesty9960 sounds like you got a car problem
So..... you want everywhere humans live to look like a Brazilian slum.
@@weldcerts yes, because there is no in between. It is either big lawns or Brazilian slum. There are no other options
What timing! My mom is reading a book rn called Life After Lawns because California is providing incentives to switch up lawns with drought-tolerant and indigenous plants to save water and build biodiversity.
Please do. I just subscribed to you to watch that process… :)
Yes
Some governments require some degree of yard maintenance to prevent weeds growing up and providing cover for rat populations. Others want to discourage and, no doubt, penalize and prohibit lawns when they get the chance.
That's the nature of electred governments.
I replaced my lawn with UC Verde Buffalo Grass. Its a very draught tolerant grass that's been bred specifically for southern California. I absolutely love it, and you can leave it unmowed if you like.
Buffalo grass is fantastic, especially planted en masse!
Excellent video. Very informative. Keep up producing your great content! Thanks!!
👏 👏 👏 👏
We have not mowed our lawn in over a year. Now we have a lovely meadow that animals and bugs thrive in.
Consider turning some of it into a garden! As a guy who has to bike 8 miles round trip just to access 100 sq. ft. of community garden, I wouldn't feel so resentful of the useless manicured lawns of the $1 million homes if I saw more people using their space wisely by gardening!
@Pat B well for one thing, some of us have dogs. And for another, ticks and mosquitos carry diseases and wild animals can be dangerous. And cutting the grass is relaxing and physically active and requires discipline. It's nice being able to look outside and think that you actually out in work to do something and to make it how it is.
Imo, the psychological benefits as well as physical health benefits make it worth while. And if you have tall grass with dogs, you're just asking for them to get a heart worm or a tick.
@@awesomedavid2012 the “psychological benefits” of having a manicured lawn isnt a valid excuse to wreak havoc on our local environments. Besides whats more rewarding: fostering natural beauty and biodiversity- or wasting your life away to maintain a piece of land you rarely use? Also we wouldn’t have such a large tick problem if we hadn’t disrupted our natural ecosystems in the first place- many native animals eat ticks, if we had a better relationship with them- our tick woes would go away
In my house we have little duckies who hide in the long grass
@Pat B cats can survive in the wild. in fact many have. we didn’t domesticate them lol, they just took advantage of the mice that ate our grains and we just made sure they didn’t die. dogs on the other hand for the most part will die out, but some packs will interbreed and create mutts that can survive in the wild :) it’s happened in america and there are some wild dog packs in south east america.
We adjusted our plants in our lawn to the new dryer climate, half of our lawn isn't ever mowed. We don't water our garden, except our little backyard farm. More and more people are ditching their standard lawn for a more eco-friendly one here in Belgium. We have installed two bee hotels for wild bees, and our backyard is getting more lively every year. I think it's much more beautiful and nice than a standard grass lawn.
I started taking out my lawn sometime ago (none in the backyard now and only a small patch in the front yard). The front yard is a mix of edibles and perennials for wildlife. Last year the city placed a notice on my property that I was in violation of the local ordinances. I had one month to be in compliance. I found the city code and managed to meet compliance. For the next six months the city came to my home checking to see if there was any reason to fine me. I ws told that a neighbor was complaining about my yard each month. When the front yard passed inspection they went after the rear yard (vegetable garden).
What was really funny to me was that neighbors would tell me that they loved seeing the birds, the butterflies, and the bees, but that they hated the garden.
@@frankschulte-ladbeck6434 why did they hard the garden. Thats your backyard and it's none of your neighbors business 🤣😄
@@Ottersauce I wish that I knew. The city would only tell me that someone complained, so they wanted to investigate it. Ce la vie ;)
@@frankschulte-ladbeck6434 I really really don't see the point of fining you for something like that. Like at all. Why? And why would your neighbor actively try to rat you out?
@@SantanaBanana47I never obtained a full explanation from the city. The code inspector just said because someone complained was the reason for the violation on my part. The city did decide to define some coreopsis and fennel as weeds though, so they were not allowed to be over 9inches tall.
We refuse to put anything but maybe a little solid fertilizer on our lawn every year. We are also slowly replacing the lawn with native plants that grow freely. I love it. Less watering. Less maintenance. Less money spent trying to make it "look nice". All I do on the non-grass areas now is pull a few weeds every so often. And it looks beautiful.
Keep up the good work! Really insightful video :)
In 2008 I was living in Stockton, CA in a gated community (where my girlfriend at the time and her ex had bought a house). In that community if one did not keep the lawn well cared for--which of course in the summer meant irrigating it--the HOA would fine you. Meanwhile in nearby Fresno farmers did not have enough water to grow food. Good old human irrationality.
Why was your girlfriend at the time buying a house with her ex? It seems... odd.
@@firearmsstudent My (now ex) was already separated from her husband and I was staying in the house that they had bought before I met her. Yes, it was odd, but we made it work.
Avoid HOA’s like the plague. Nothing but a bunch of Karens with the power to ruin your life.
I let my native "weeds" grow instead of a lawn and I love it. It's horseherb and it's an awesome, low-maintenance ground cover that I find really pretty. Plus I get tons of fireflies now!
Probably because people just dont go outside enough. Lawns are absolutely useful as a playing ground. Its like a mini-park.
"Keep off the grass."
Front yard gardens and returning the areas around our homes to native grasslands sounds like heaven to me
Can we talk about moss lawns? I heard they might be pretty good.
I don't think that would work on a bigger scale, because mosses normally need shadow and very wet soil.
Clover is also great
If you're talking about peat moss then that takes decades to provide ecological value. Not feasible for land which gets developed, demolished, and redeveloped relatively often.
We should seek to preserve existing peat bogs, which sequester a large proportion of carbon, and choose suitable plants for our gardens.
@Blue Plumbob Opinions can be changed. Imo clover looks amazing especially when it's flowering. Plus there are micro clover varieties that don't grow as tall so those would help with automatic pest control by not giving them too much of a habitat.
That’s what I’m currently letting my Lawn convert to.
I live in the Czech Republic and in the last couple of years it became really popular both in the public and private spaces to get rid of the lawns in favour of flowering meadows. You only need to cut it 2-3 times a year, it supports insects etc. This was enabled by some companies coming up with new seeding mixtures and it being recommended in media as a way of adapting to the climate change.
can you tell me what kind of seeding mixtures they use?
I live in the Netherlands, we have so much rain that lawns are advised to garden owners over hard surfaces so that the rainwater can seep into the earth instead of going down the drain. Moreover, I love gardening and there is a lawn in my garden, which I like and which is quite useful to me. I largely agree with your point of view, but I am not going to get rid of it and turn my garden into some stone desert. But I do have some advice, that makes owning a lawn far less of a waste. Mow the lawn so often, that you do not have to collect the cut grass. On average this means cutting the grass twice as often as you usually do. The cut grass will be so small, that it will disappear into the lawn and will act as nutrient for the grass. This way you can keep your lawn healthy indefinitely without adding fertilizer. Odd as it may sound, this does not require extra work. If you mow your lawn without a grasscollector on it, you do not have to stop every few meters to take the collector off the mower, take it to your "green" container to empty it and walk back to attach it to your mower again. Bottom line: you will not exhaust your soil, you will not polute your soil with fertilizer, you will not be dumping tons of healthy green material over the years and you will save some money on fertilizer and garbage disposal. Finally, I collect rainwater from the roof into several barrels, so that I do not need drinking water from the tap to spray the lawn in case a drought.
Meanwhile, the beautiful "lawn" of moss, clovers and creeping herbs that keeps my great grandma's tiny front yard evergreen : Spreads fast, sturdy to being step upon, requires no additional watering or pesticides and naturally never grows more than 4 cm tall. The diversity of colors and textures is so beautiful.
OCC does a great job presenting and revealing the significance of these overlooked problems... Huge thumbs up
This is not overlooked. It was just a problem never got enough attention. Our home doesn’t have a lawn. It’s replaced by some trees and vegetations.
They, like Vox, just make me feel guilty for things I never did, just cause I'm white. We need to stop making everything race based. I know that's what happened but can't we just let it go and move forward? Stop finger pointing and work together to find a solution
@@coastaku1954 that is the whole idea of this video, to bring attention to u but first they have to tell u the history of how it started....then it’s easier to fix from their ...aleast u know the history of lawn in America and the bad effect on climate change and ways u can correct it ...
If their are video calling out corruption in developing countries and climate issues around the world why can’t video be made about countries like America
I'm going through this with my neighbor right now, I am hand pulling broad leaf weeds and letting the clover take over my yard. I also planted a patch of sunflowers in the front. While I was gone for nine days, my neighbors lawncare guys mowed my whole front yard. I think my next step is to just rototil the whole thing
Why tf did the people your neighbors hired go onto your property to destroy your garden? Did they think it was an act of charity to "civilize" your lawn, or did the neighbor set them up for it?
@@mynamejeff3545 I think it was both. I don't think there was any explicit nefarious intent but it felt like maybe they didn't think we could afford lawn care? Even though I own two mowers I don't use anymore. Me and my girlfriend are definitely the youngest and farthest left in the neighborhood. Idk, they are a strict Christian fundamentalist family and are just fully bought in on the capitalistic view of the American dream.
@@tjjohnson3286 ain’t that it, something so out of conformity can’t fit in their heads, gotta go!
It's crazy. In Poland you can have whatever plants on your parcel
The TruGreen ad before the video was a nice touch.
Why -Lawns- *Entire* Suburban Dystopia has to be eliminated would be a way understandable thumbnail tittle
@@normandy2501 Preach I wholeheartedly agree with your mixed areas with transportation friendly structure would be the most fit solution
@@normandy2501 European cities always develop like that. If you want to live in a house, you can live more at the edge. If you want to live "in" the city you move to hotspots. Leads to more diverse neighboorhoods as well: 2 house appartment, just a single house with a market close by, an appartement in the city close to office jobs and shops.
@@normandy2501 i thinks its so unfair for many americans! I have seen the statistics on how the few gets everything. Your government have all the resources they could dream of so its not a question that they should help poeple, but they dont.
Really hope the situation of your country changes soon. I hope its better with Biden over Trump at least.
Easy for me to say but i know no other way. Try to be the force that invites more democracy to america. Good luck❤
@@normandy2501 Families with children also live in cities. Mandatory single-family zoning is what causes transportation nightmares in the first place.
@@normandy2501 No one is trying to abolish single-family dwellings or saying you can't have privacy. But you should know that city taxpayers are paying for your suburban idyll via federal and state grants for roads, sewers, and utilities. American suburbs do not currently support a large enough tax base to pay for themselves. That seem fair to you?
As someone who mows lawns for a living I can tell you why. Having crazy tall grass and weeds around your house might be good for mother nature, but it's terrible for your living conditions. Your house will become full of spiders bugs mice snakes ECT. You can fight these things off with harsh chemicals but that's also not good for nature. Also there is significant risk for fires when the tall grass dries out in the summer time. So as long as you love bugs and no house insurance let that grass grow!
Nobody wants to hear this man speak some sense. We all just want to be lazy and say oh it's good for the environment 😂
Came here to say this. Regulation exists because if you let your lawn grow wild, not only you live in poorer conditions, but affect the quality of life of your neighbours.
I gave you a thumbs-up just for the title! I know this stuff, it's great to hear I'm not alone!
Yup. It does happen! I'm one of them! I was honestly arrested and fined for not keeping my lawn "maintained" when I was unexpectedly taken to the hospital for 3 weeks! I am in court over it right now!
I have never thought about lawns in this way. I had no clue. They are such a mundane thing that I don't think about what goes into keeping them green. Thank you for informing me!
I suggest you watch Eco Gecko's series on how suburbia in general is absolutely terrible for the environment. His videos are very information dense, but also VERY well researched. th-cam.com/video/BOJgPL9DMdM/w-d-xo.html
As a non american when I visited the US and went through suburbia it was a weird feeling seeing all of the identical houses with flat boring lawns since where I'm from we don't mow them and don't really pay any attention to them at all
Also consider the average apartment dweller like me, who has to bike 8 miles round trip to access 100 sq. ft. of community garden, when there are literally thousands upon thousands of sq. ft. of useless manicured lawn in the $1 million homes nearby my apartment complex. That fact leaves me quite resentful sometimes, being stuck as a peasant forced into wage labor for my food!
@@JustDinosaurBones I'm trying very hard to grow tomatoes in my north facing apartment windows... 1 tomato on each plant is all they had the light to produce. How I wish I had even a square meter of outdoor space.
I own a small terraced house with my husband here in Ireland and we've got a small back garden but a long front garden. In the back, I wanted a small patch of green so instead of just putting down grass seed, I planted mainly cloverleaf. It requires little maintenance, the insects love it, requires little water too and much nicer to look at. For the front garden, there's a long lawn but I'm going to replace it with mainly wildflowers and some vegetables.
in 2018 I ripped up both my back and front lawns and replaced it with ground cover plants and flowers. My neighbours thought I was crazy, but who cares? my daughter loves seeing the bees buzzing around and pollenating.
This is so true, think about how helpful that space could be to plant bushes and plants that help animals and pollinators. Planting native trees and plants could help to actively repair ecosystems
Exactly also imagine how much your house would be worth if you have garden beds and bushes and plants with native trees
Replacing lawns with indigenous species and tree cover also heps to lower temperatures and maintain better conditions to native animals and insects, if done city-wide it can actually have major effects and along with other measures like painiting roof and streets can lower temperatures thus decreasing electricity consumption from AC units an such. There's an ongoing project like that in Montreal: the Zirter Urban Landscape Ecology Lab.
My back "lawn" is only 2-3 meters wide, one side on the house and the other side on a creek. I haven't mowed it in over a year, but the tall wild grasses and flowers that have taken hold really make it look nicer.
Thanks for what you do!🙏
Only reason I want a yard is because I want a garden. I want fresh fruits and veggies, as well as just something for me to do. I like gardens. Lol. Also trees. Lots of trees. Nice shade perfect places for tree swings or tires. Lol
lawns/yards are good if used as biodiverse gardens
seriously, i want a property with lots of land so i can make it into a forest and live in the middle of it. i’d love to have a stream or pond to add to the greenery.
There is a wonderful channel called eatyourbackyard. Check it out
@@coagulatedsalts4711 trees take decades to grow like that, we have a set of 2 decade old spruce trees up here in Canada and they only recently grew past 6 feet tall
@@loganthegoldenheron8786 It does depend some on the type of tree and the climate. Apple trees, for example, grow much faster than your spruces.
We should be allowed to plant almost anything on our own property, imagine if everyone who can started growing their own food and it didn't have to be trucked in from far. it would be awesome.
The Corporations that our government bows to don't want that as it would cut into their profits(some of which they use to pay people to keep their golf course lawns green).
@@marvinbrickhouse9122 everything except my front yard is planted, here in Quebec Canada in most parts of it you are not allowed to have a garden in your front yard
@@marvinbrickhouse9122 lemme tell you about a lil' authoritarian organization called the "Homeowners Association" or HoA--basically a bunch of people who get to decide everything about what you can do with YOUR property. often the rules are stodgy and dated, and cover everything from minimum sqft of front lawn, to outdoor furniture and what color your house can be. regressive conservativism at its finest.
@@marvinbrickhouse9122 every neighborhood i lived in in the US has hoA telling you what to do with your house's outside appearance and one thing is you cant grow food and once they even said we couldnt plant a tree in the front
@@marvinbrickhouse9122 yea thats how it should be but its not our reality 🤷♂️
Turn your lawns into permaculture food forests, wildflower meadows and native plantings
Reject your HOA
Grow corn on your front lawn
As californian i can understand why theyd arrest you for your lawn. 300sqft 6ft tall dead grass lawn is a huge fire hazard.
I used to hate how my mom always grew vegetable garden in our yard instead of just growing grass but adult me is so thankful for the fresh food I get from that garden. And this video just made it even more better.
I would of loved that
One addition to this video about the lawn would be kids: i have read in multiple articles that kids who grow up with a lawn are less comfortable with nature. I dont really know the details, but i have seen many talk about it
i'm not sure if it's that significant or not, it might just be a correlation. because richer suburban kid won't really choose naturewalk as their pass time of choice
@@aronseptianto8142 tru. I live in suburbs. But since they dont have any meaningful wildlife we go to the mountains and various other parks outside.
Yes finally someone who also wants to remove lawns
My brother got warned by powers that be for not cutting his lawn often enough. It wasnt even very long. It was maybe millimeters above whatever arbitrary rule was made.
I have never fertilized or watered my lawn. Sure it has weeds but I don't care, it's probably good for the insects. But I do cut it, I don't want snakes and ticks.
Yup, ticks are the reason we don’t keep long grass around the house. Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever are not something I want to experience.
Same
@@naddarr1 It wasn't even legal to own hens in my town until we brought it to the local government 3 years ago, and we can't legally let them range.
@@naddarr1 get gunnie hens they love ticks ,
@Town Crazy I keep hens as pets and because I think the egg industry is cruel but it's true that I don't save money by having them, especially because I don't really treat them like livestock. they dig up the grass for dust baths more than they forage for bugs too.
I love my lawn, tall fescue in particular. No chemicals are necessary if you put in a little work to make it a good thick turf. I enjoy it’s beauty when I come home after work, and looking out my front picture window on the weekend. I find it relaxing, and maintenance is almost Zen.
exactly, a video made by a renter
Taking care of my house I live in with my family is one of the most meditative things for me. Your home is your sanctuary, take care of it, and reap the benefits. Plus, not taking care of your lawn and area around your home invites spiders, critters, etc.
When i lived in the states, i was so dumbfounded by the whole lawn thing... Like... It s literally wasted space that gives you extra work for no reason.. All my suggestions as to what we could do with the space were shut down (like put up a swing for the kids or flower beds etc) because "what would the neighbours think?" :/
The sad thing is that lawns can be a haven for wildlife if they are managed properly, and by that, I mean managed in a way that is useful to wildlife like growing bee/butterfly friendly flowers, planting native bushes and trees if the lawn is big enough, growing native wildflowers, etc... They don't have to be ecological deserts and can help people get close to nature when they are in an urban environment.
Start by leaving the edges of your property natural. It will provide a natural screen from the neighbors and provide food and shelter for bees, butterflies and other insects and small animals. Plant some flowering bushes and flowers and reduce the lawn space considerably. Add a big flower or vegetable garden and reduce the lawn even more.
I wish I could put this on my social media, I live in a indigenous community in northern NYS and I don’t mow my lawn and I always hear about from everyone but I think this video might change a few people in my communities mind especially the part about colonialism
It's insane that I got an ad for a fertilizer in the middle of this video, they're literally all like "do you want a lawn like *this* but have a lawn that looks like *that*?"
Wild stuff.
You WILL eat the bugs, you WILL live in a pod, you WILL own nothing and you WILL be happy
Completely agree. Logic will always lead to sustainability. Preserving the old ways is the new conservativism.
What? That's exactly what conservatism is. Keeping with tradition and resistance to progress is its definition haha :)
@ Calculator Womens rights are kind of the definition of conservative now as it is quite a long time ago that women could vote in western countries. That isn't progressive anymore. Do you know women who couldn't vote when they were young? Me neither.
Yes traditional herb gardens, cottage garden and flower gardens that mirror those of the thirteen colonies with flowers like lambs ear, bee balm, sage, rosemary, lavender, mints, cat nip, thyme, parsley, chives, pumpkin, Borage, cucumbers, peas. Traditional living in this country had gardens full of beautiful, aromatic and edible plants. We need to abandon the modern ways and go back to nature.
Preserving (conserving, if you will) old ways, is LITERALLY what conservatism means. There is no "new conservatism" as that's an oxymoron.
I just got more into gardening, and while working on something, I accidentally cut a wire that's used for my family's lawn mowing robot. Now, after this video, I wonder what could have been if we just got rid of it. I'm in Europe, so the thing about indigenous plants isn't that big of a worry, but we have quite a large property and using more of it as a vegetable garden would be very cool.
I had to go to Environmental Court in the '90s. in Little Rock AR. I didn't even know that there was an Environmental Court. I lived on an acre of rocks and natural grasses, wildflowers, and trees. It wasn;t groomed enough, the complaint was from a neighbor who was OCD about his manicured lawn.
One thing that is great for the soil and bees are ground covers. I spready out a mix of white clover and creeping red thyme seeds over my large 11,000 sq ft patchy fescue backyard. Then I rolled composted cotton burrs over it all. I kept watering and now it is an oasis mixture of clover, fescue, and thyme and like a thousand butterflies all spring and summer long. Its beautiful.
4% of all emissions come from lawn equipment!? Oh my God, talk about low hanging fruit..
Soon it’ll be closer to 0%. Many battery powered lawn care devices are here and they will improve over the next decade or two.
@@josephj6521 too bad the batteries will degrade and end up in a landfill in ≈10 years.
@@hithere5553 🙄🙄 Battery technology will be better, cleaner and safer. I’m sick of smelling smoke and getting my ear drums blown by my petrol mower.
I long for the day without lawn mowing and leaf blowing.
Some very useful facts here. Great video.
I don’t water my lawn and i am reducing the size of it, but my question is don’t other plants and vegetables need water too? Or is it that the space is just better used for those things? The lawn is a real pain and i am slowly covering it with plants and perennial flowers but not sure if this is good.
I always get so sad when the Grass in my town is being cut down here in germany! I get that people dont want to live in a forest but at least leave it Knee high
I agree. I live in Saint Petersburg, and in some places grass is cut relatively short. Still not ad short as those lawns though, it still manages to grow. Some glowers adapted, and now grow short in the centre. Plenty of dandelions are so short they stay intact after mowing)
We cut grass and over grown areas in cities because pests like Mice love using them for cover. Its unsanitary.
They always cut the flowers within it as well leaving less nectar for the bees
It's like they forget to cut it for 10 years and then go full destruction on it lol
Grass is so pretty when it's actually grown, there's patches near my house that haven't been attended for a while and it's really pretty / sway-y(?) at the moment. It's not grass that you have to walk through so it doesn't really matter.
It looks like a wheat field in a painting or something, idk
At least here in vegas they want to ban ornamental grass
Im a landscaper. The main reason for keeping grass cut, is to prevent vermin from becoming too much of a problem. Let your lawn or yard grow for a couple of months, and you'll have rats, mice, snakes, spiders, mosquitos, etc.
When I get my own house, the first thing that’s going is the grass. I’ve always wanted my own garden, and what better way to use the space then to grow my own food? Additionally, replacing the grass with native plants or even clover will make it look more appealing, be more eco-friendly, and even promote healthier wildlife!
I cut my lawn with a scythe. It's quiet, great exercise, and the cut blades fall back on the turf where I don't need to apply any kind of fertilizer. No emissions other than my own breathing.
I own a scythe with hand forged brush and grass blades. For my very small lawn I use a hand pushed scything reel mower. I do trail maintenance and adapted a Japanese hand scythe by putting it at the end of a broom stick.
It's sad that you don't have at least a million subscribers. More people need to understand this.
We got rid of our lawn about 15 yrs ago. Planted native grasses and other native prairie plants and trees (midwest US). Trees on the south are now big enough to provide shade and evergreens on the N/NW side provide windbreak in winter.
Plus veg gardens in the back yard.
The content of your video is very well made and I believe this video should be played for everyone in America thanks for the show .
On a serious note, after watching: What did I just watch? American suburbia seems so alien to my innocent European mind. What went wrong?
It's America... Everything there looks alien for everyone except for Americans...
@@googleprofiel6814
American suburbia was loosely inspired by British estates, so its not that alien.
I guess you would like "Not Just Bikes" videos on this exact topic ;)
The United States is a land where everyone is trying to emulate rich people despite the damage it causes to others and themselves.
"What went well" would be a much shorter list.
My neighbor mowed my lawn while I was away one weekend, lol. I thanked her!
this became hysterical when a Toro lawnmower ad popped up in the middle of this
My backyard is large, but not useless. We keep geese, chickens a tortoise and a rabbit as pets. They roam free during mid spring to early autumn, grazing the grass and browsing on shrubs, fertilizing it, produce eggs, and generally maintain it. We have some fruit trees, thick undergrowth, and some wild-ish looking overgrowth with the shrubs and trees. There are different species of grasses, clovers, dandelions, and more. We never use insecticides or herbicides. I will never allow it. Spiders, wasps, beetles and other invertebrates are extremely abundant. All of the livestock and pets care for the yard completely. We never mow, we just water it occasionally for the primary grazers, and that's it. This is all in an urban backyard. Compared to all my neighbors, our yard doesn't look nearly as neat and managed, but I love it that way! I watch native birds eat from the fruit trees, nest in the vegetation, and I try my best to keep away invasive pests like starlings and house sparrows. We get more insects, flowers, and a healthier, more colorful look to the yard than any surrounding lawns and yards. I wouldn't have it any other way. If I could replace all the plants with only native ones, I would immediately, but sadly, I cannot. I'm trying to see if I can remove my front lawn and replace it with a more productive environment. There are a few bushes and fruit trees there, but it's not enough. It's small, but still has too much useless grass. I think a lawn is fine only when it's used productively. If you have a resource, sustainably take advantage of it. Don't waste it.
We ripped out our lawn last year and now grow about 40 different veg, fruit and herbs.
Even higher maintenance for less tabled people.its ideas we need not even higher demands
This channel is slowly killing all my American dreams😅
Better that happen now then when you go there and realise you're in the American nightmare.
America can be great if you're highly skilled labour working in a growing industry, but the 'white picket fence' suburban lifestyle is an unsustainable dystopia.
As the late George Carlin quipped "It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it"
@@deus_ex_machina_ That's so true. The normal belief is that life there is so much better than the developing nations, but it's all just an illusion. An unattainable and unsustainable lifestyle born purely out of capitalism to entertain elite snobs that have no consideration for the society nor any concern for the the message it sends out to the general public and the coming generations.
Good
You know it's called the american dream because you have to be asleep to believe in it ...
You should get yourself a nice house and a big yard and be happy. I'm pretty sure people who hate the American dream are miserable.
I whole heartedly agree where do I sign up to do something about this in Portland?
We need a video on why asphalt must die!
Why? We need something to make roads out of. Less carbon than concrete. Cheaper. Its basically a waste product. Its endlessly recycleable.
awesome video. i remember a college professor talking about exactly this a few years ago.
growing up in Seattle in the 80s, i remember my neighborhood having all these bare lawns. even as a kid i realized it was kind of desolate. one house at the corner suddenly filled every square inch of their corner yard with diverse plants and trees, as well as solar panels on their roof. the neighbors all thought they went a little overboard. but now, decades later, diverse gardens are the norm all around Seattle. though that corner house still has the densest garden i've ever seen. walking around the neighborhoods all around Seattle and admiring the gardens is one of my favorite things to do when i return home.
however, if you go to some of the new Seattle suburbs, it's pretty sad how they're still in the "destroy the forest and build a development with no tree" trap. they had a golden opportunity to build a new house surrounded by mature trees.
here in Korea, it's a totally different story, as most people don't have a chance to own their own house. the majority live in highrises or small apartment buildings. at least we're surrounded by green small mountains everywhere.
but thinking back to Seattle, mentalities have changed over the years, and hopefully your video nudges a few more people in the right direction. ;-)
It's nothing more or less than a change of fashion.
Yeah I don’t take care of my lawn, just need a garden now
Still got to take care of your garden too
Bought my first home a few years back and have shaved my lawn like 3x yrly max. I shave around all the pretty weeds and bushes that grow and have enjoyed a plethora of life in my backyard.
I shaved my lawn once. Never again. It was itchy for over a month.
Thank you for making such relevant content. I would like to contribute in any research work if need help.
Best video I’ve ever watched. Been doing it to my acre for almost 35 years now. Released 75 monarchs and a few dozen silkmoths into the wild every year.