Don't Get With the Program

The Case Against Mowing Wildflowers

If you viewed our yard and meadow from a distance, or in the early morning before the flowers rise to meet the sun, you might be puzzled why some patches have not been mowed.

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

As you get closer you will see a pattern. I don’t mow the patches of wildflowers that emerge early each spring and summer. By late June, the flowers have gone to seed or faded away and I cut the meadow grasses before they are too tall for the mower to handle.

All over the wide fields of earth grows the prunella or self-heal. After every foolish day we sleep off the fumes and furies of its hours; and though we are always engaged with particulars, and often enslaved to them, we bring with us to every experiment the innate universal laws. These, while they exist in the mind as ideas, stand around us in nature forever embodied, a present sanity to expose and cure the insanity of men.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

My wife’s favorites are the colonies of bluets.

My favorites are the hawkweeds. Some say hawkweed is an invasive species, but it has never crowded out other species in our meadow. Others tout hawkweed’s medicinal properties.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Protecting the wildflowers helps me be more mindful. Sitting in my riding mower, I can’t zone out. I must be alert for the wildflower colonies.

Every moment instructs, and every object: for wisdom is infused into every form.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Living in a rural area, I notice more the rhythm of nature. In January, I begin to notice the more direct rays of the sun; by August, the first hints of fall are seen in the forest. Unencumbered by city lights, the cycles of the moon are visible out my window. On the nights of a full moon, so bright is the light that you can almost take a hike safely in the forest. Paying attention to the cycles of wildflowers adds another dimension of awareness.

Immersed in nature, there is no escaping the fact that we control very little in life. In the city, many think otherwise as they are in-training to be “masters of the universe.”

Anyone who has spent years working in a garden or in the fields knows impermanence intimately. We see the cycle of seasons, the coming and going of insects, droughts, freezes, rot, the seeds that sprout or die, the life cycles of plants, the bountiful harvests and the lean. It is all change. There’s nothing that can be counted on with certainty to be exactly as it was last year.

—David K. Reynolds

When you don’t mow your wildflowers, you’re not “getting with the program” of cookie-cutter manicured yards. Too many people have gotten with the program in healthcare, with education, with diet, with fear of speaking out. The results have been catastrophic for both themselves and society.

At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don’t mow the wildflowers. Grow a garden. Homeschool or supplement your child’s education. Cancel cable and read a book. Since the basis of any good diet, from keto, to Mediterranean, to vegan, begins with whole foods, take the time to cook with whole foods. This summer enjoy the vegetable and fruit bounty of your local farmers.

Reflect on your purpose. Be skeptical of experts. Your feelings lie; they can enslave you. Oppose bureaucrats ruling via unconstitutional administrative power. The world needs your voice; don’t censor yourself.

Turn off your autopilot. Don’t get with the program.

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way.

Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson