Alongside AI: Lawns

1

Post WWII Prosperity: In mimicking large estates, suburban lawns "offered an opportunity to market fertilizers…to homeowners…DuPont released Uramite, a slow-release nitrogen fertilizer specifically marketed for lawns. The trend continued throughout the 1960s with chemical firms such as DuPont and Monsanto utilizing…advertisement to market pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides. The environmental impacts of this widespread chemical use were noticed as early as the 1960s."

2

Is the lawn an archetype? Homeowners might play golf on a lawn, but the lawn's origin is less as pasture or play surface and more as killing ground surrounding towers, keeps, castles.

 

"In the 1900s, a Viennese psychologist named Dr. Ernest Dichter took [archetypes] and applied them to marketing. Dichter…sent every ad agency on Madison Avenue a letter boasting of his new discovery…applying these universal themes to products promoted easier discovery and stronger loyalty for brands."

White House, for example, has plenty of lawn but relies on lawns elsewhere to display proper ownership —golf courses in places like Scotland, Ireland, Indonesia and coming soon to Bali, Dubai…

3

Capability Brown "created 'identikit' landscapes with the main house in a sea of turf, some water, albeit often an impressive feature, and trees in clumps and shelterbelts, giving a uniformity equating to authoritarianism and showing a lack of imagination and even taste on the part of his patrons."

4

Richard Brautigan's 'Revenge of the Lawn': "The lawn had belonged to my grandfather who lived out the end of his life in an insane asylum. It had been his pride and joy and was said to be the place where his powers came from."

5

Beneath the lawns on Stranger Things, "Barb 'wasn't supposed to be a big deal,' and the Duffer Brothers had not gone into great detail about the character… Many fans sympathized with the character; Laura Bradley of Vanity Fair suggested that Barb would be a similar misfit in society, and 'looks more like someone you might actually meet in real life'."

Barb in the series isn't a 'misfit'; we see her battle is not with an imaginary monster but with the precarity of being an actor in a place owned by duffers.

6

"Peter Drucker originally coined the term profit center around 1945. He later recanted, calling it 'One of the biggest mistakes I have made.' He subsequently asserted that there are only cost centers within a business, and 'the only profit center is a customer whose cheque hasn’t bounced'."

In reality, profit centers are what homeowners call their 'possessions,' My House, My Car, My Kids, My Job, My Clubs, My Town, My Parents, My Lawn Mower, My Diploma, My Computer, My Life…

"Brautigan was raised in poverty; he told his daughter stories of his mother sifting rat feces out of their supply of flour before making flour-and-water pancakes. Brautigan's family found it difficult to obtain food, and on some occasions they did not eat for days."

7

My mother-in-law convinced her apt's mgmt to let her garden in unused spaces… Own your own 'yard' by eating it all up  (ʘ↓ʘ) 

"Fall may be the quiet season in the garden, but it’s one of the most rewarding. With a bit of planning —and a willingness to plant while others are pulling up —you can grow sweet roots, crisp greens, and garden satisfaction right through the shortening days. So before you hang up your trowel, take one last lap around the garden…Still a season left to grow."

"[Patrick] Boxall sees wee forests as something that could be planted pretty much anywhere, observing the area involved is not dissimilar to the lawn area of some American houses… Grown using the Miyawaki method, fast-growing miniature forests in the middle of cities can bring surprisingly big benefits for people and the environment." 

Take revenge on your lawn before it kills you.