b'Many exotic species have spreadThey said in closing: their mechanical, robot-like rapidly, often out-competing nativemaintenance routine.Clearly, I flora and limiting food resourcesThese are not plants. had failed to meet the purpose of for local wildlife, threateningYou need to just clean out this stuff. my 550-mile round trip. I too sank the stability of once thrivingOur clients would never accept this mess.low with the cold setting sun. ecosystems. Grassland prairies areCan we just bring our own plants?among the most critically imperiledWe want it to look like that (pointing)Began to wonder about deeper ecosystems in North America.across the street. meanings, how we came to this place. The colonialism of the I was thinking, what if my workAcross the way, I looked at thelandscape across the way. The could affect and change the visionneighboring conventional mow,cleanliness is godliness and of these two very influentialblow, and go landscapes in allwe were told to have dominion persons? They perform such valuablequadrants. The one-inch heightover all living things. Thought work to the community at large. trimmed, dormant warm seasonabout Madison Avenue mass African bermudagrass lawn hadmarketing campaigns when I was tall wildflowers & grasses bloom,tall grasses protect groundlayers of Fall bird/pollinator migrations depend on seedsWinter critters, perennial root systems and and nectar, next spring flowers sprout annual seedlings from harsh freezes and dry bitter windsBut I just could not get throughbeen overseeded with Northerna kid. They made it look so cool to the existing, well-indoctrinatedEuropean cool-season Poa trivialissmoke cigarettes. Contemplated paradigm. Their heels stayed dugto maintain a golf-course-greenWall Street insatiable greed, how in, and my prairie stories were metlook in winter. There was a thincapitalism is based on natural with set jaws and steely eyes. Notgreen line at the base of theresource extraction coupled with quite an hour had passed. The sunbuildinga line of never-changing,endless economic growthwas sinking low. The chill beganperfectly aligned, closely hedged,even when our natural resources to nudge into the edges of my oldevergreen Japanese boxwoodbecome depleted. I thought about bones. The doctors turned awayshrubbery. Nothing alive everWashington DC and how a couple and prepared to scurry towardsmoved in this landscape excepthundred years of laws of the land their cars.the weekly crewmen performing and our short history of progress'