Weeds? I have but one of these. It is the Canada Thistle and I go after it with a weed plugger, severing its tap root with my plugger's v-shaped knife. Except for these thistles, I nurture each creature with love and care or simply "let it be." Why only one weed in my lawn? Because it is the only thing I do not want to be there. A weed, of course, by definition, is a plant you just do not want where it is growing. If only I could just learn to think differently about this thistle-- perhaps by finding a way to enjoy the pain it gives my bare feet-- I could have a lawn with no weeds at all!

Animals? This lawn is a rich and full carpet so thick and beautiful that this Fall I and my students could not find something we allowed to crawl through our fingers and drop to the lawn below. It was a beautiful Brown Snake (Storeria dekayi) whose migration across the lawn to its hibernaculum was interrupted by us so we could enjoy its beauty close up. But dropping it to the lawn, we simply could not find it again; it disappeared into the green fabric before our eyes-- the living quilt that covers the living soil below. Year after year this soil is thus blanketed, and week after week it is steadily built up by the cuttings made by my mower that cuts everything over 3 inches tall. Helping in this process of soil-building are remarkably abundant earthworms, who, uninhibited by biocides applied to many other lawns, absolutely flourish.

A few days after mowing, I wonder where the clippings went-- why no "thatch" appears! At night, by flashlight, I find these great worms consuming my cuttings-- consuming them leaf by leaf and discharging them out their other end as rich soil. My worms turn potential "thatch" into soil, and this ever-building soil helps all the creatures here hold claim to this lawn as home.

Reaching down to the greenery, my fingers move through the mat as through ultra-thick hair, the soil completely hidden beneath. But it is more than grass and other plant creatures. It is habitat for all kinds of animal creatures too: toads, snakes, and more. It is an extremely friendly and wholesome place, making it also habitat for humanity. That is not to say, however, that it does not produce anxious moments for its keeper. Once in my lawn, the resident woodchuck decided to move from the distant edge of the lawn to burrow under our house. Frustrated, and tempted even to think of guns and poisons and traps, I dug up the garden around the house instead. Spading down 6 inches and out from the foundation four feet I created a broad and shallow trench into which I placed a fence-- horizontally. And then I added a 1 by 2 inch mesh fence a foot wide on top of it-- a second horizontal fence, and covered it up using my spade. With soil put back and garden replanted, I waited. Came again the woodchuck and the chipmunks. Digging and digging, they repeatedly hit the fence, became discouraged, and soon returned to their previous stations across the lawn and at lawn's edge. This lawn is shared habitat, and people live here too! No more undermining of the DeWitt house!