La-La-Land Lawn Care

It's the eeeeeeevvvillllllllll CHEMICALS!!!

The [anti-chemical] group has worked with the local school district to eliminate the use of lawn chemicals and persuaded Whitefish Bay village officials in 2003 to stop spraying two small parks - Buckley and School House - and the boulevard on N. Santa Monica Blvd. between E. Silver Spring Drive and E. Montclaire Ave.

That small strip of grass in the middle of Santa Monica has plunged Joyce and her group into a turf war that is being played out in other communities across the state, the nation and in Canada.

The battle: whether to use chemicals to get rid of those dandelions immediately or to naturally groom lawns with organic material and wait a few years for results.

Some object to the "wait a few years" part--because dandelions are notably proficient at creating and spreading, ah, dandelions.

Not to worry: Ms. Joyce has a solution: she recently rounded up a brigade of weed pullers to work on the boulevard.

The sanguine comment:

"There are a lot of people out there who are activists and love the environment who have no scientific background..."

The Joyce-ites take for granted that Chevron and Monsanto, major players in the lawn chemical market, employ mad scientists who aren't real fussy about the formulations.

Right.

Joyce and others promoting the cause cite studies correlating lawn chemicals with cancer, Parkinson's disease and asthma.

Maybe, but offhand, I doubt it. I'll grant that the allergy/asthma incidence seems to be on the upswing, but my personal and totally unfounded guess is ethanol. Since the ethanol craze began in Wisconsin, there have been more reports of asthma on the weather reports. QED.