Lawn Care and Tourism on Cape Cod

I don’t understand the craze to have a lawn.  In fact, to having a lawn seems like a terrible thing.  Huh?  Well, every time I mow the lawn, I am contributing to the depletion of top soil.  Cape Cod already has only a thin layer of top soil.  Grass can rob nutrients from the soil if it is mowed carelessly.  Those nutrients are scattered to the wind, and they blow away, where you might find them in the depths of the ocean.  Now, some mowers are better than others.  And, I guess I don’t have a problem with it if it is done like how my Dad does.

Last summer, I had a side job mowing lawns, and I just couldn’t do it for so many reasons.  I thought the man overcharged for his rooms.  I thought his actions were borderline on heartless on several occasions, and that he should have been more charitable.  I did not need the money, but my goal was to help him pay off his mortgage, such that he did not owe money, or was at least not forced to foreclose on his property.  Now, in his favor, I don’t think that he knew any better nor any other way of doing things.  However, he was the boss, and I knew of a better way of doing things, such that no slave is superior to his master.  It was an employment scenario that just couldn’t work.

Not only does grass deplete the top soil, but to spread it about aimlessly conjures up my idea of the characters Er and Onan in the Bible, and the wickedness of spilling one’s seed, that resulted in the Lord putting someone to death.  At the place of employment, there were these big piles of dead plant growth, and yet no attempt was being made to use them for the purpose of recycling.  This is the difference between he and my dad.  When my dad mows his lawn, he collects the grass, puts it in the place in the woods along with other plant material, but he actually uses it when he gardens.  They key ingredient of the mistake my boss was making was that he was mixing grass clippings with branches.  This sort of scenario can’t result in an optimized composting system.  Rather, it becomes difficult to retrieve the part that becomes soil first, such that over the course of time, what you have is a pile of sand left when the grass can no longer grow and a pile of grass clippings that would be as a worthless island of soil, the beginning of an oil deposit in the middle of a land of sand.  Locally, what good are two piles, except for when one is for long term recycling, while the other would be good within a year or so?

What I was doing by mowing the lawn at this place was inviting visitors from foreign lands to bring invasive species, which in all probability would cause harm to the environment in the short term.  In the long term, the invasive species may actually benefit.  And, perhaps, where there is one invasive species that is dominating an ecosystem, a natural predator from the invasive species could be introduced, a foreign species, almost like an invasive species, to help control the population of the problematic invasive species.  Such is the concept of the phrase, “The more, the merrier.”  That is, just because a species is not native to a certain environment does not make it problematic to that environment.  However, in the case of owning a local motel, the mowing of lawns invites foreigners to haphazardly bring invasive species to Cape Cod.  Cape Cod already has many invasive species, and it is my prayer that these invasive species don’t destroy Cape Cod, and its value even as a place to visit, but that in the long term the overall strength of Cape Cod’s ecosystem is improved, such that there is population control, not just for humans, but also for invasive species for creation is groaning at the sins of mankind and his voyages.

One invasive species that is sometimes a problem on Cape Cod is the gypsy moth, no offense to gypsies intended on my part.  But, these horrible moths sometimes destroy the beauty of Cape Cod, leaving chewed tree leaves, and dying trees.  It is therefore been my suggestion to introduce natural predators of the gypsy moth to the environment of Cape Cod, in an effort to control them.  There are other invasive species, such as certain kinds of crabs, and grass that are also invasive.  I do not know much about the foreign lands where these creatures come from, but what I do know is that they are running rampant, and a stop needs to put to their superfluous multiplication.  If nothing is done to save Cape Cod’s trees, then Cape Cod is destined to become a ghetto.

Sometimes places that have been wonderful tourist attractions turn into ghettos.  I am a witness that that happened to some places on the New Jersey shore.  After a drive through the ghetto, I came to a sign, where there was a picture of where I was standing, but it wasn’t in ruin, it was fine and luxurious like Cape Cod.  And, I thought, if it can happen to them, it can happen to us.  We need to take action!

Cape Cod is precious and needs to be protected.  We must be a land that don’t need tourism to flourish, if we are to be more than as a firecracker in history.  We must be able to get by without tourists.  We need to think local, such that we can be a self-sustaining community before we start to invite visitors.  We also need to be able to clean up after our visitors, such that we can care for them appropriately.  If we have not done these things, then we have not been hospitable to our visitors, and likewise we should expect that Cape Cod will not be hospitable in the future.