it's not easy being green

after pledging on tuesday to be greener, i cut my lawn on thursday and bagged some of the clippings into 3 large trash bags. my green conscience kicked in that night (fueled no doubt by the renewable energy source that is catholic guilt), and i spent an hour searching online about how best to deal with grass clippings.

the consensus across multiple websites was, of course, to leave them on the lawn. most sites agreed that long clippings (like the ones that were in my bags) didn't sit too well on lawns, but this could be avoided by just cutting more frequently. no one seemed to have very good advice for those of us who had already let the lawn get too tall. so i looked for other alternatives to leaving them on the lawn.

apparently grass clippings make great mulch, if you want green mulch that turns a yellow brown when dry and smells like a sewer when wet. they can also be composted by digging a "shallow hole" and covering them with dirt. i have an acre of grass to cut- a shallow hole to fit my clippings would have to be about 40 feet in diameter. one site did recommend using the clippings as a blanket to kill weeds along fence lines, which seemed like the most reasonable resting place for my clippings at this point.

so, after another cutting today and a collection of clippings from most of the lawn, i now have a 60 ft long, 18 inch high "blanket" of grass clippings all along the back of our property. after the rain coming our way tonight, it should take care of the weeds quickly while providing the lovely aroma of spring in the country.