Boomers like lawns because it's what they see on TV. It's not just that the people on TV had lawns, it's that lawns themselves are clean, sterile, and empty.
It's also kinda American. Originally it was a statement of the feudal lords and shit, hey look at me my farmers are so prosperous I can have this big patch of fertile soil by my mansion and not need to use it for food, I have so many workers I can pay them to hand cut these acres of land every day instead of just getting sheep to do it and producing food at the same time, I don't need defences around my house, I'll just have this wide open land because no one would ever want to attack me anyway. It was originally a sign of wealth. Americans still had that notion but because there was so few land restrictions everyone could have a nice big lawn, thus removing it as a status symbol and removing the entire reason to have one, but as a result became a socially expected thing. It's so detached from the meaning that it has just become this societal autism thing, you don't really understand or question why you do it, you don't interact with your thoughts or feelings on any meaningful level, you just do it because you do. You must kill the dandelions and daisies and buttercups, not for any actual reason but just because you have the thought in your brain to do so and are either unwilling or able to interact with it. The only thing I would call a weed is goosegrass, as well as some forms of tree choking vines that keep popping up. I have a patch of nettles that I still make soup with just like my grandma did. I've got kilos of blackberries in the freezer from the brambles too. The rabbits or whatever can come and eat the dandelions or the bees can take their pollen. Hell if it self seeded I wouldn't even remove a fucking gorse shrub if it was in a decent position.
It's how they are, and I'd wager your dad didn't just not think he was doing something wrong, he probably feels justified.
Because I've already kinda gotten off topic. One of the main things I absolutely disagree with when it comes to Christianity is forgiveness. It's one of the main reasons I stopped going to church as soon as I could. There were two people in my school that were absolute cunts. They both went to the same college as me and were in the same friend group. I was open to looking past the past, called that for a reason and all. One of them went from an uptight cunt who larped as an upper class twat despite firmly not being, to being a genuinely nice guy. Don't really talk to him any more because other than the college work we had nothing in common. The other ended up staying as an absolute cunt who would routinely grind on his girlfriend that he was overly possessive of infront of children down to 10 years old. He would routinely fake suicide attempts and claim that because his mother died years ago that excused him from being a bad person. I can't say much more because I genuinely think it would be borderline self doxxing, but one of my childhood friends did something so insanely talented that it was probably on the same level as getting into the olympics. This guy heard about that and started going on about how he was applying for the same thing, despite being the equivalent of a sunday league player. They both did not deserve forgiveness, they were both still cunts, but they deserved a second chance and retribution. One of them took it, the other does not deserve to ever be given a second chance again. I dated a guy around the same time, he turned out to be more than just a massive cunt. He does not deserve forgiveness or any second chance. Those things are entirely relative. I'm just not entirely sure where I stand on this specifically. It doesn't matter either way because doing it twice especially after being directly told not to is at least one time too many. I'm just not sure if the first is forgivable if it stayed there. It comes back to the whole shoes on/off analogy, it is just so outside the realm of normal behaviour that it makes me question if it is just normal societal autism or something personal. It's not like the garden never came up before the first time either, I had already mentioned I like the long grass and stuff. I didn't make it clear that it was intentional, but that doesn't matter because it is not your fucking house. At the same time it really does feel like I'm looking after a child again, having to hide keys so the mentally impaired can't go out and do something they shouldn't. Was just hoping for maybe a couple decades before having another dementia patient to look after.
he (in a way) owns your lawn, so it is his right and obligation to make it fit what he expects it to be
My grandma used to be the polar opposite. She spent my entire childhood telling me that when she's dead and buried that she will be too busy being dead to give a shit what I do with the house. She explicitly told me when she was still lucid enough to know that she was dying, that once she was dead she would be coming back to haunt me if I didn't take time off work to do what I wanted to with the garden. She explicitly said do not fucking keep it how it is for me because I will be dead. Throughout my entire childhood she'd tell me that if I wanted a pet horse in the garden or an entire zoo then it was my land to do just that with. I won't say what type specifically for once again privacy reasons, but I did consider getting a pet pheasant for a while, some of the exotic ones are some of the most beautiful birds I have ever seen.
Not once did she tell me 'do whatever the fuck you want; as long as your father approves'.
"protecting" you from the perceived judgement of others.
I routinely walk around around the garden shirtless and have locked eyes with one of my neighbours while taking a piss more than once. They've done something somewhat similar to me anyway. I even lent them a hand digging and preparing part of their garden for renaturalisation, admittedly more of a planned selection of native flowers than the scattershot approach of tearing out half the lawn and throwing a load of seeds on it and seeing what happens. Even if they did judge me than I still wouldn't care, they're free to think whatever they want about me, same in reverse. What they think of me has no impact on my life at all, I'm not lying awake at night crying that two out of 8 billion people have a less than perfect opinion of me.
you're not allowing yourself to get angry
It takes a lot to make me angry. Annoyed? Yea. Maybe if I was writing this when I got home yesterday it'd be a different story, even then it's hard to stay annoyed when your pet polar bear comes and flops his head onto your lap and demands attention. No point in working yourself up just for an internet post. Obviously I'm annoyed or I wouldn't have written anything, but there's no point in trying to write anything if you're too angry to think straight. I learnt very early on when dealing with my grandma, she's going to do things that piss you off. You will get fucking annoyed at her often and intensely. And that the best thing to do is to take instant action to prevent whatever happening again and leave it at that and just walk away until you're no longer angry and maybe talk about it with people that understand you as a distraction type shit. Maybe go and sit in the garden and watch the birds for a while, ohh, wait, yea. Arguing with someone who is unable to change will result in you losing 100% of the time, you will never win, you will just feel much worse at the end of the day. I've never been one for conflict anyway. Especially if it'd ruin the vibe for my mother too. The answer isn't anger or arguing or whatever, the answer is simply that next time you come up here and left alone you go back to the hotel or whatever instead of staying in my house alone and when you do come up you come to my house less, if at all. Anger wouldn't resolve a problem, it'd extend it, you're not fixing the problem you're just extending it. There's enough yarrow in the garden to treat all the headaches anyway.
The hedges are still thick and the pond is still wet though, even without grass to hide in I'm sure they'll still have enough hedge to hog around in and I don't think anyone else near me has a big wildlife pond so it's probably one of seldom few places they can get a drink. If anything it'll be easier to see any tracks of them now that you don't have to route through a foot of grass.
Anyway thank you for coming to 'femboy fart huffer daddy issue' talk.
