Lawn Follies: City Gets Rapped On The Knuckles For Trying To Seize Someone's House Because Of Tall Grass

I've been fascinated with the politics of lawns for years.  The latest news report about it concerns a man in Florida whose city tried to seize his house because of tall grass.

Thankfully, the Institute For Justice is helping him to fight back and he seems to be winning.  I hope he wins.  The tall grass laws are crappy laws that shouldn't exist.  I don't care what my neighbor does with his yard.  The neighbor could grow a forest there, and I'm never going to complain.  That's the neighbor's business and not mine.  I might not like it, but the neighbor might not like what I do with my yard either.  And it certainly is not the government's concern.  They usually are just enforcing conformity or trying to pad their coffers (i.e., give themselves and their relatives jobs) or both by interfering with grass growing on private property.

What is needed for lawn liberty to be protected overall is for more people to believe in it.  Unfortunately, many people who will wave the flag on the 4th Of July will act like Nazis the next day if they don't like their neighbors' yards.  Hyperbole?  Not really, I've been studying this stuff for years.  I've even found cases where people have been murdered over lawn issues.  Here's one:  https://fox8.com/news/man-accused-of-shooting-neighbor-running-her-over-with-lawn-mower/.  If you read it, you'll see that the murdered woman was mowing her lawn at night.  Surely, a no-no, not enough to justify a murder, but clearly lacking in neighborhood grace.  But why was she mowing the lawn at that late hour?  Because she was leaving on vacation and didn't want to get fined by her city for violating a stupid tall grass law.  Notice that no one mentions in the article about the sentencing the stupid tall grass law that probably set the whole tragedy in motion.  But a couple of years later that same city the murder happened in brags about sending out taxpayer-funded workers to harass taxpayers about the height of their grass:  "We reacted to 263 grass complaints and mowed more than 150 properties, a 16% increase."

And surely we all remember this, an all-star moment in lawn follies, when U.S. Senator Rand Paul got attacked by his neighbor.  Paul was mowing his yard, and the neighbor was enraged over lawn debris on Paul's lawn.  Cheers to Paul for mowing his own lawn; he might be the only U.S. Senator who does so.   Jeers to him for not introducing federal legislation banning tall grass laws.

Though it's amusing to keep track of these lawn follies, a serious matter does lurk underneath.  I hope you shake off the brainwashing of the lawn industrial complex and stand on the side of lawn liberty, nay, indeed, yard liberty, who needs a lawn anyway?  Grow a garden instead!

No lawn follies but other laughs can be found in my latest novel.