April 17. 2013 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • Page 15 Cognizant of that – and rising property taxes -- the Wyckoff Township Committee recently came to a quiet decision: No more pickups of cut grass. The cycle of “cut and bag” just ended unless property owners want to hire a private contractor, completely outside the municipal loop, and pay someone to cut and bag the grass. Wyckoff officials had considered an option when they announced earlier this year that there would be no more curbside grass pickups. They offered to foster a deal that would allow individual residents who wanted to pay the town’s contract out of their own pockets could have the grass collected on a fee-paid basis. In 2012, only 10 to 15 percent of Wyckoff residents left their grass clippings out for collection, and when confronted with pay-as-you-go, there was reportedly not enough interest to subsidize a single collection. Wyckoff has offered four possible alternatives: cut it and leave it -- mulching mowers do this best because they cut the grass into very small pieces; compost it, along with anything from the table that is not meat or dairy, so it becomes useful organic fertilizer; take it to the landfill in a car; or hire a private contractor. Two alternatives are good, two are not so good, but not one is perfect. Here is a fifth alternative: Stop growing grass. Plant something else that absorbs water, holds the soil in place, helps reduce the carbon footprint, and replaces oxygen. Think of the opportunities! Put in a formal English garden, a kitchen garden, an herbal garden, an Oriental garden, a miniature forest with ceramic pixies and elves and dragons -- anything but that monotonous mowed grass with the endless runoff into the storm drains or the neighbors’ basement -- or your own basement. In Allendale, Waldwick, and one section of Wyckoff, officials are conducting a friendly campaign to stop people from using sump pumps to illegally empty basement water into the sanitary sewers and to dump the water right back on the lawns so it goes back to the ocean. The campaign is important and responsible -- and in the long term, necessary. But it is necessary only because the area has been so covered with asphalt and roof shingles and so bereft of water-absorbing plants and trees that the natural drainage just does not take the water out of the flow soon enough. If the grass grew to its natural height -- figure about eight inches to a foot -- it would turn most of that water into more grass, but keep it out of the drainage system, and the oxygen generated by photosynthesis would not only reduce the carbon footprint but would cool things. We do not need to fly over the polar cap to understand that global warming is real. All we need to do is resolve to live without air conditioning for as long as we can endure. I tried it last year, but I didn’t make it. Of course, I turned it on only for the computer…I hate it when the computer screams. The idea that lawns scream is admittedly a mind-stretch, but anything that wakes people up to reality is therapeutic. Town leaders are gradually realizing that they cannot handle every problem by jacking up the taxes. The screams of the grass are inaudible and not at all obvious, but the kind of taxes that northwest Bergen County residents pay for decent schools and services should also guarantee the absence of flooding in basements that only used to get wet in 100-year monsoons. We cannot be sure grass screams, but if we stop cutting it, we can stop worrying about it. If you listen with your nose, you may be able to smell your lawn screaming later this year. Your conscience may make you wish you had listened to reason instead of your nose. This just in: Lawn grass screams when people cut it. This is scientifically established. What are we going to do about it? First, consider the awful facts. A recent PBS broadcast, “What Plants Talk About,” featured a panel of experts from the United States and Canada who reported on a strange discovery. Plants have no brains and no vocal cords, but seem to respond to outside stimuli in ways that, to some extent, mimic the emotions of humans and the higher mammals. The “scent of new-mown hay,” so beloved by people singing or listening to nostalgic songs about life on the farm, is actually a stress response to the cutting of grass. The mown grass sends out an aroma as a sign of stress. Plants are now called “green-leaf volatiles,” and cutting them, especially before they are ripe, causes them to respond by the releasing scents that some people used to find comforting. This sounds like the ultimate delusion of the so-called “tree-huggers,” but the people on the show included staffers of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Alberta in Canada, and affiliates of the Max Planck Institute, who practice international peer-reviewed science rather than dabbling in responses to that other type of grass. These experts say lawns “scream” in the sense of releasing scent while being chopped. Some of the details are fascinating. One team examined the spotted knapweed, a desert plant that has a virtual immune system for driving away the hawk moth, whose caterpillars eat the knapweed leaves. The knapweed is so successful at warding off predators that it chokes out the wild grasses that domestic cattle feed on in the West, and ranchers have had to strike back by breaking the cattleman’s most violent taboo: sheep herding. In the days when the West was wild, cattlemen hated sheep and they hated sheepherders so much that they sometimes paid rogue cowboys to murder the sheepherders and find ways to get rid of the sheep. The sheep cropped the Plains grasses so close that the abundant grass died off during droughts and left nothing for the cattle or horses to eat. The sheep also walked into streams instead of stretching out their necks to drink from the banks, muddying the water so cattle and horses had to wait around to quench their thirsts. Sheep, however, are the reason lawns were invented. When rich families with ample land kept sheep -- especially in the British Isles -- the sheep ate the grass at one end and encouraged it to keep growing from the other. Sheep and lawn grass bonded synergistically. In those days, lawns made sense. Today, lawns make no sense unless you can get a variance to keep sheep. Instead of turning the grass into mutton and wool, the modern applications turn it into water bills, gasoline bills, and outdoor time that could be spent growing vegetables and flowers. Lawn care is a sort of habit some people have developed and cannot break. It is not a good habit. Listen to your lawn Students from AHLISA (American History and Literature with an Integrate Study of the Arts) Program at Ridgewood High School recently visited Harlem. They had been studying the Harlem Renaissance and had the opportunity to see where that history was made. Students started the day with a traditional southern breakfast at the House of Prayer across from the famous Apollo Theatre. They visited the Schomberg Center for Black Culture, took a bus tour, jammed with musicians at Miss Marjorie’s Parlour up on Sugar Hill in the apartment building where Count Basie lived, and ended the day with swing dance lessons. Up on Sugar Hill