During the week, each morning, I’ve posted photos of wildflowers near a parking lot on our college campus. There are two reasons for posting them. Those photos appeared Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
First, the flowers make beautiful photographs, however poor the photographer. Seen as they are, they’re lovely.
Look back over the photos from the full week, seeing these plants closely, and I think you’ll agree. Even my poor photography cannot spoil them. They’re living wonders.
Second, they reveal not merely natural beauty, but diverse and plentiful life — each small patch is home to both plants and animals, a small ecosytem all its own. A person might conclude that plants like this are all a jumble, but they’re more than that — they’re beautiful plants and animals of an interdependent order.
Natural lawns are like this, too. I don’t have one, but I can see that they’re beautiful and representative of a created order. These beautiful but harmless lawns should not be mowed down, in whole or part, by municipal mandate.
There are things to be said in favor of a homeowner’s natural lawn.
It’s a legitimate use of private property, earned by private citizens, and cared for by them. No bureaucrat bought the properties on which these lawns grow — they were not earned at his labor, were not nurtured with his time, and should not be subject to his meddling. This is the arrogant presumption of publicly-paid officials: that they may not only draw a salary at public expense, but may restrict and control the fruits of others’ salaries at their whim and discretion. It simply shows an official’s disrespect for the boundary between public and private, to regulate ever father. To other communities, it makes Whitewater a subject of criticism by contrast with their own practices.
Sometimes an official will insist on regulating private property, but will wail, gnash his teeth, and rend his garments at the slightest criticism of his public performance. Regulations should rest on the presumption that private property should remain free of public meddling. Similarly, those regulations should be free of motivation from spite, pique, and retaliation for public criticism.
It’s wrong to contend that these are merely weeds, as that’s simply misinformed and ignorant. They’re not weeds, but a delicate, small ecosystem of living things. It merely battens on ignorance to contend otherwise.
Lawns like these, few in number across the town, cause no harm to others, although one can expect specious arguments along those lines. Should such arguments be made, they will merit a thorough and comprehensive refutation, debunking flimsy arguments. That’s a refutation that one should be happy to make, if the necessity were to arise.
Someone, somewhere, saw the beauty in the wildflower flowers planted near the campus this summer. He was right to do so. Plants like these, and other wild varieties grown with care by homeowners in town, and worth admiring, and defending.