Word. The appeal of front yards (and, for that matter, back yards) is something I've never understood.
I like gardens, rather than yards. It can be nice to have grass, or some other short dense soft green stuff, for the walking-on parts of gardens. Grass is also pleasant for playing croquet. But grass goes best in grass-friendly climates, and surely lots of Texas and New Mexico are not that.
A really lush, maintained lawn is a pleasure to walk on in bare feet, but I'm many times over too lazy to achieve one. Most of my lot is effectively feral now.
I do love my TV, though. It brings me programs that make me happy.
I'm all for climate-appropriate vegetation, but unattended yards just look *wrong*. Plus, if you live in an area that gets any foot traffic, not taking care of your yard is an invitation for people to drop trash in it.
How do you feel about peeling paint, heebie?
I wouldn't say NM is grass-unfriendly, exactly; there are plenty of native grasses that grow just fine, and people who have lawns often use them. Most of those native grasses don't grow in ways that make them well-suited to that use, though.
Most of Texas, on the other hand, is very warm and wet. Grass grows just fine there.
I would say my preference is not for unattended yards, but for no yards at all. Build right up to the sidewalk! (Yes, I am aware that zoning codes in most places prohibit this.)
I have a guy who comes around once a week or so and mows all the vaguely grassish weeds down so that it passes. Most of the lot is creek and woods, though.
How do you feel about peeling paint, heebie?
Oh, mostly indifferent. I think a new coat of paint spruces up a sad old house nicely, though.
I love you, Heebie. But, boo Josh!!
I really wish we had sidewalks, though. This area gets so much pedestrian traffic.
I guess I think of the English climate as the paradigm of lawn grass friendliness, but of course there are lots of different kinds of grasses, and many of them are just as lawn friendly as the varieties that flourish in, say, Suffolk.
I'm really, really happy that the person who owned my house before me put mulch and native grasses on my (sloped) front lawn. There are still parts that have to be mowed, but not nearly as many.
And I've seen some beautiful front yards in the southwest that looked minimally complicated and quite natural. But I'm with Josh in that I don't like neighborhoods that look actively unkempt. If you've ever lived anywhere marginal you know how fast things deteriorate -- I fought a losing battle with the litterers at my ex's old place.
It doesn't matter to me much either way, so long as you kids get off of mine right now, understand.
Ogged doesn't like well-kept front lawns.
I like gardens, rather than yards.
I agree. Of course, I have a slab of concrete and potted plants that are looking really raggedy at the moment (transition between seasons is not a good time for tomatoes and basil to be aesthetically pleasing, and the rest of the stuff just got a little sun burned in the last hot snap).
And as for back yards, the appeal is largely for kids, no? Not that you can't play in the weeds, but it can be nice to be able to stay somewhat clean and play outside. (Though my friends that had an entirely dirt back yard were pretty popular, back in the day of mud pies and giant engineering works - we created mountains and valleys and cities in the valley and then turned the hose on.)
Of course, even with native grasses, planting and maintaining a traditional lawn in the southwest is a huge amount of work. Lots of watering and mowing to keep it looking nice.
This seems like an appropriate place to (again) link to my xeriscape pictures.
Good timing. Today is the day I hire day laborers to dig out my unkept lawn, in favor of beds for plants (which I will install myself). I've hated my lawn for a decade now, and it shows.
Lawns suck. There aren't many forms of landscaping with less return on labor.
Our front yard is densely planted with half a dozen trees, among other things, and the girls want to turn our back yard into a vegetable garden, so I look forward once again to a lawn-free future.
I would vow to never mow again, except that I haven't mowed my lawn in five years. It does indeed attract trash and look crappy.
If you've ever lived anywhere marginal you know how fast things deteriorate -- I fought a losing battle with the litterers at my ex's old place.
I'd say this neighborhood is marginal. There are a lot of those boxy houses that are smaller than any apartment I ever lived in.
And as for back yards, the appeal is largely for kids, no?
Indeed. Although this young gentleman seems to be pretty astonishingly creative even with a backyard essentially of dirt.
Of course, even with native grasses, planting and maintaining a traditional lawn in the southwest is a huge amount of work.
?? Maybe I wasn't clear, or maybe you and I are thinking of different setups. The ones I walked by in Tucson seemed to be austere, with rocks, gravel, sand (?), and various types of dirt predominating, sprinkled with a few cacti (?) and other plants that looked mostly non-flowering and quite low-maintenance. I dunno; this is hardly my area of expertise, so maybe they need a lot more than I assumed.
Like, the kind where if you picture the floor plan, you realize all the rooms are probably the size of walk-in closets.
I like backyards, especially fenced ones. They're great for dogs and kids and gardens and BBQs and croquet and chickens and all of that.
Front yards make zero sense to me. They're wastes of space. (The exception being for houses built on very busy roads--being off the street a bit can help some with the noise, etc.)
I realize I have some slippage in my terms. I'm mostly on board with the lawn haters but I do see some value to small patches of grass. Yards, on the other hand, I believe are wonderful and would like everyone to have at least some small patch of outsideness to call their own. (Balconies, patios, whatever.)
Maybe I wasn't clear, or maybe you and I are thinking of different setups. The ones I walked by in Tucson seemed to be austere, with rocks, gravel, sand (?), and various types of dirt predominating, sprinkled with a few cacti (?) and other plants that looked mostly non-flowering and quite low-maintenance.
Yeah, you're talking about xeriscapes (see the link in 18), which are a lot of work and money to put in, but pretty minimal effort after that. I'm talking about lawns, of the sort you would find in the east.
A timely thread! We've just made our weekend to-do list, which includes the item "make plan for front yard". Lawn is right out. Currently our yard is That Yard on the block (we just moved in). We've got a 24' x 42' space to play with, we're in a seasonal desert, and we want to water as little as possible after the plants are established (though other sorts of maintenance are fine, within reason). Help us, Mineshaft!
Eh. I should stay out of this thread. I live in the land of manicured lawns and am the unkempt outcast. I have strong feelings.
Di, if it helps, I don't cast judgment on the unkempt! And heebie clearly loves them!
Here are some (not very well maintained) lawns.
We've got a 24' x 42' space to play with, we're in a seasonal desert, and we want to water as little as possible after the plants are established (though other sorts of maintenance are fine, within reason).
Xeriscape, definitely.
My TV writing partner doesn't even have a TV.
Here are some well-maintained (indeed, freshly mowed) lawns.
Ok, the lawns in 31 are preferable to the lawns in 34.
That we'll xeriscape is a given. But with what?
Front yards make zero sense to me. They're wastes of space. (The exception being for houses built on very busy roads--being off the street a bit can help some with the noise, etc.)
Yes, gardens in the back, as little as possible in the front except for trees, but those ideally go between the sidewalk and the street, not in a front yard/garden. I do also approve of front porches and stoops.
Here are some well-maintained (indeed, freshly mowed) lawns.
Ick! Ptui!
Hey Di. Wish I could help you OWN that unkempt front yard. I suggest standing in front with two big fuck-you fingers to everyone who tells you to tend it. If I were there, we could make it four.
GB, I've done some internet searching for appropriate native plants for my yard, but my main strategy is to throw myself on the mercy of whomever staffs the native plant sales at the arboretum next weekend.
You could try googling [your state] Native Plant Society and see if anything turns up close to you.
Here are some well-maintained (indeed, freshly mowed) lawns.
With those brown patches?? The neighborhood association is frowning.
7: Most of Texas, on the other hand, is very warm and wet. Grass grows just fine there.
A rare climate and geography fail from the teomeister. Some of east Texas meets this description, but all of Texas is too hot for "traditional" soft-walking lawn grasses (Bermuda and St. Augustine grasses and variants do kinda work) and most of it is too dry in the summer, if not all year. England is indeed the perfect turfgrass climate. Wet, cool, little sun, not too cold in the winter.
40: Like I say, it's a lot of work, and not everyone's up to it.
41: More of a botany fail, actually, which is not at all unusual. Botany is very much not my strong suit (which means I'm no help at all for things like GB's 36).
25
Front yards make zero sense to me. They're wastes of space. (The exception being for houses built on very busy roads--being off the street a bit can help some with the noise, etc.)
There is also a privacy benefit. And many people will prefer to look out on a front yard rather than directly on a street.
Ogged doesn't like well-kept front lawns.
Mullet lawn: short, groomed on the front; wild, long on the back.
A Queens fron lawn: cut the curb, paved it. One pulic parking space removed, one private space added.
Good call, Megan---the internet tells me that our local botanic garden is having its fall sale right now. Off we go.
For anyone who's interested in fixing my front yard, it would probably help if I stated the problem better. We're trying to figure out what to plant, certainly, but more than that we're trying to figure out what the whole thing should look like. Is there a path? How do we define the space? How do we make it look like a whole instead of just a bunch of plants that happen to be next to each other?
There's a gentle slope to the yard, so that the house sits about a foot above the sidewalk. We've gotten as far as saying we'd like to even that out and put in a low retaining wall by the sidewalk, built out of some kind of material with nooks that will let us grow hens-and-chicks and things. Beyond that---um. We're doing a lot of walking around and looking at front yards. Some have high fences or tall plantings that say keep out. No way. Some have no separation at all from the sidewalk. Maybe, maybe not. Some manage to set themselves off from the sidewalk in a very friendly way; there's clearly a boundary, but what's beyond is appealing, and you'd quite like to be asked in. Tempting. We want to be neighbors with the running across the street for a cup of flour and the block parties and so forth, and we want the house to reflect that, so maybe no boundary other than the retaining wall. But the house and the lot are fairly small, and if we want to sit and read outside, it may need to be in the front yard, in which case I feel like I want some sort of boundary that says the yard is part of the house rather than part of the street.
In sum, I guess, we're shy but friendly. How do you put that into garden terms?
44: Heh! This was my FB status the last time I mowed -- that I was going with the mullet.
|| A friend's FB status: "anyone know someone at the University of Chicago, who would be interested in photographing 3 pages from a 1937 dissertation there?"
just email me if you're game. |>
One of the attractions of the grass lawn is that it's easy to set up and maintain. I have ambitions to turn my front yard, and most of my back yard, into a more ecologically sustainable and beautiful native-plant paradise, but this turns out to be a ton of work and to involve setting up a drip-irrigation system that's beyond my capacity to install or very expensive to have someone else install. Much easier to just buy some sod and water it occasionally, even in Southern California. So now I have a not-very-well maintained grass out front and back that I'll get rid of someday.
I do really love having a front porch and a small front yard. It's great to be able to sit out on the front porch, be set off from the street a little bit, and watch the progress of the neighborhood, say hello to neighbors, etc. I use the front porch, not the backyard, as my regular reading spot and it would suck to have the house go right up to the sidewalk.
I like meadows, of which lawns are threadbare imitations. My father still speaks wistfully of a house that he came close to buying 10 years ago, the property of which included a decent area of forest, a couple of meadows and a broad creek. Man, that place ruled. Too bad the house was in such awful shape.
... I don't get front lawns at all.
The Atrios guy deploys this device all the goddamned time: he just doesn't get Americans' -- how do you say? ah, yes -- middle-class neuroses about God, sex, teenage pregnancy, drinking, parking lots, schools, suburbs, etc., etc., et freaking cetera.
Back from hiring the day laborers. It is extremely disorienting to me to have other people working on my house. I'm not used to it at all. Do I work with them? Do I watch them from the porch? Are they doing it exactly the way I would, only times three and faster?
This is so fraught.
And if you're single and the homeowner, it is so weird to have things happen when I did not do them myself.
So where does one find day laborers to do yard work?
I think the only thing you're decently obligated to do is to offer beverages -- soda, lemonade or water during, and beer after. And tip, of course.
34:is very similar to my front lawn, except in the background ad on the verge you can see the point...I have a 35 foot ash in the front of the house.
Look, I can't speak for Austin, but Dallas in the the, ya know, Great Plains. The national grasslands where the buffalo used to roam. Leave a hunkoland alone, and you will get 7 kinds of grass. Over a long enough period, the grass is replaced by trees.
And that is my backyard. Unseeded, unfertilized, unwatered, unmowed although the city bitches at me, I have grass to my elbows and 1 50 high by 50 wide mulberry, 1 30 x 10 maple, a chinaberry, and, counting, 8+ smaller trees in an area of about 2000 sq ft.
And ticks, fleas, mosquitoes, small furry critters.
54:Oh I forgot the dead willow.
None of the trees were planted. The mulberry was moved to the center as a sapling.
Bathroom access too, I'd imagine. I've got a pitcher of water and glasses out there, which I'll keep full. Shoot, I don't have any beer in the house.
It is just strange in so many ways.
Not wanting to do the hardest part of the labor feels like it violates the puritan work ethic (and my father's expectations).
Hiring (entirely pleasant-seeming) laborers goes straight to the liberal guilt.
Simply having work progress in parallel is odd for me.
Now how much front yard do you need to grow a large tree?
Enough so that the roots don't eventually come up thru the living room floor.
And why mow that front lawn?
So you don't get seven trees at the front wall of the house.
Now I guess you can spend a lot of effort to have a rock garden, but I have to spend a lot of effort keeping the driveway and sidewalk from disappearing in the sea of grass and treeroots, and I can't imagine a rock garden being easier.
And it ain't natural.
Now I have no idea what kind of music to crank while we work. When it is just me, this isn't a problem.
Fuck, I got this little brick wall, about 2 x 3 feet enclosing my front porch, and I get trees trying to grow out of the concrete top of that sucker.
Turns out they like the Dixie Chicks fine.
Or are they just saying that because you're paying them? Not only are they selling you their labor; they are also sublimating their personal tastes to keep you happy! They could be suffering right now and yet there's no way for you to communicate with them because of the destructive effects of capitalism on social relations!
41 is just wrong, as someone who runs dogs in meadows. The DFW area grows wildgrasses just fine, until they are naturally replaced by trees.
And tip, of course.
Really? Tip contractors? Do you tip your plumber?
Millenial SWPL favor no grass, while some GenXers and almost everyone older go with full lawns. I think the change happened when people were exposed to the idea that having a lawn was not a required part of adulthood. I often wonder about the gender disparities, however. Is it possible that as men have become more involved in housecleaning and child care, they have had less time to carefully maintain their lawns? At some point, excessive lawn maintenance becomes a ridiculous positional pursuit, and it's annoying to live near people engaged in it, because they make everyone else look worse in comparison, even if I feel righteous for being simultaneously lazy and green.
Huh. I suppose it depends on what 'day laborers' means. I was thinking 'guys who work for someone else' not 'self-employed'. If you're paying them directly and they're keeping the money, then I wouldn't tip.
And I am not certain about all of Texas, which heck I think is bigger than Europe and Asia combined or something, but I don't think Abilene, Amarillo, and Austin naturally look quite like Midland/Odessa.
I did see No Country which takes place I think east and parallel to El Paso, not far from the border, and antelopes were eating at the beginning, and looked like some short grass to me.
If the backward rest of the country would get your grid (the indy Texas grip is fine) together, we Texans would be pleased to sell y'all windpower
Tejas will rule the 21st. C.mon on down.
So where does one find day laborers to do yard work?
Home Depot. Or West Berkeley, depending.
Also, Megan, you want the Sunset Western Garden book. (I presume you already know this, and am posting this comment mostly to prove my cred.)
41 is just wrong, as someone who runs dogs in meadows.
Yes, interesting grasses in Texas and the plains, but nothing like the short turfgrasses beloved by suburbanites.
I think some authenticity has survived capitalism. They don't seem to care for the Dance Hall Crashers.
We concreted over our little front garden area because the parking restrictions in our neighbourhood made it very hard to ever have visitors. (Didn't lose a public parking space though Econolicious - no parking on our side of the road.)
Neither of the sets of lawns in 31 and 34 are well-maintained. I don't see what's wrong with the idea of front yards, depending on the neighborhood layout. I don't see what's wrong with the idea of no front yards, depending on the neighborhood layout. I see what's wrong with lots of actual front yards, though.
Kids will play in front as well as back yards, though. Or at least they used to. This might be one of those things that's declined over time, like kids playing on the sidewalks or streets.
They don't seem to care for the Dance Hall Crashers.
BURN THE HERETICS!
(Also, don't you have a norteño station you can play for them or something?)
I did see No Country which takes place I think east and parallel to El Paso, not far from the border, and antelopes were eating at the beginning, and looked like some short grass to me.
It takes place somewhere around El Paso, I think (I haven't seen it), but it was filmed in New Mexico.
Neither of the sets of lawns in 31 and 34 are well-maintained.
Maybe not by California standards...
Actually, I looked and looked through my pictures to try to find a picture of a well-maintained southwestern lawn, and 34 was the best I could come up with.
76: *Some* of it was shot in New Mexico. Other parts were shot outside of Marfa, Texas (at the same time as There Will Be Blood was filming in the same area).
78: Huh. I didn't know that, but I'm willing to take your word for it.
The lawns in 34 look like a lot of maintenance time has been put into them. But that's not the same thing as doing it well. There are lots of partially dry lawns in California. I think I prefer that to overgrown.
Personally, I'd want a yard that works fine without a lawn or a garden - unless I'm not expected to maintain either of them. As a kid, I loved our non-lawn front yard and part lawn part dirt and trees back yard. I was disappointed when we moved somewhere with just enough front space to have to maintain it - not much more than the width of the sidewalk - but not enough to be called a yard. The back yard wasn't much either.
Grasses per se are not so bad as all that, but most of them go naturally brown through a lot of summer and/or the winter and their natural habit is to grow tallish. It is the insistence on the always green monoculture putting green that is odd-- the ideal yard from the American Garden Club's early 20th century anglophilic drive to promote lawns, a plot with a single type of grass with no intruding weeds, kept mown at a height of an inch and a half, uniformly green, and neatly edged. In addition to nativist social pressure, the development of cheap lawn mowers and garden hoses really helped cement the place of the lawn in America.
The lawns in 34 look like a lot of maintenance time has been put into them. But that's not the same thing as doing it well.
Well, yeah.
I guess by "well-maintained" I was thinking more in terms of aspiration than results.
most of them go naturally brown through a lot of summer
The California bunch grasses are green and blue through the summer, brown in the winter. It is the European invaders that turn brown in the summer. California used to be brown in the winter, green in the summer, although I have to say that if that were restored in my lifetime, my head would swim to see green hills in the summer.
84
... California used to be brown in the winter, green in the summer ...
Really? Green in the summer?
The very few places that are still the native bunch grasses are, in fact, green in the summer.
I know, it's crazy.
I think my neighjborhood is halfway between 31 and 34 in age and quality of houses, lawns. We have more and bigger trees.
What was remarkable to me in both pictures was the lack of cars and trucks. I mean, look at the driveways in 34. All that empty space, and the street, needs to be filled up. At least 5 vehicles per house.
And I'll bet the garages aren't converted, into bedrooms or workspaces. We are the only ones in the hood that actually puts cars in the garage.
It's important to note that the picture in 34 is of a fairly new subdivision on the fringes of Colorado Springs. Here's the other side of that street, with some cars visible.
84-86: Surprised me a bit as well, but from what I can find on the web, the native perennial bunchgrasses were characterized by very deep roots (and naturally grow with ample space between "bunches") and thus are less dependent on immediate rainfall and have a growth cycle which is often more spring/summer-based (although apparently some do brown up in the summer).
The rangeland scientists I was talking to last week -- about native grasses, in fact -- did say that most (all? there's not much) of the surviving native grassland is either very near the coast, or at high elevations, so possibly the bulk of the inland hills were brown in the summer. It's really, really hard for me to imagine the vernal pool regions above Merced being anything else.
Also, to complicate matters, it would all have been Different when there was a giant tule lake in the central valley part of most years. The Bay Area hydrological model in Sausalito is well worth a visit, if any of this sounds at all interesting.
The rangeland scientists I was talking to last week -- about native grasses, in fact -- did say that most (all? there's not much) of the surviving native grassland is either very near the coast, or at high elevations, so possibly the bulk of the inland hills were brown in the summer. It's really, really hard for me to imagine the vernal pool regions above Merced being anything else.
Also, to complicate matters, it would all have been Different when there was a giant tule lake in the central valley part of most years. The Bay Area hydrological model in Sausalito is well worth a visit, if any of this sounds at all interesting.
Megan still around?
Water Armageddon in California
DFW is at least ~7 inches above normal precipitation this year, and a full 12 inches above last year. Currently at ~33 inches which is probably as high as the Upper Midwest. Madison WI averages around 35 total per year, with three months left.
And with Texas temperatures, we get green and flowery fast.
Huh. I was overwhelmed by curiosity, apparently. The lawns in 31 look about like mine in this house, in terms of maintenance, though our front yard is about twice the size and is surrounded by hedges, so I figure people aren't noticing it much unless they stare pointedly -- which I suspect the neighbors do, or did until they got tired of it. The neighbors have been known to hose down the street, for heaven's sake. Pesky leaves. In the street. (Also, those houses in 31 are horribly close together.)
We have bunnies rabbits in our front yard frequently, which is cool.
We put some effort into getting the hedge-like things in order when we first moved in, which I believe the neighbors appreciated, so they forgive us the rest.
As for 34, good grief. Striped lawns! No bushes or trees! Awful.
On the other hand, I love a well-manicured soccer field.
Yeah, the subdivision in 34 kind of represents everything that's wrong with the American built environment.
Also, those houses in 31 are horribly close together.
This surprises me, though. Really? I mean, they're close together, but I wouldn't say unreasonably so. The houses in my current neighborhood are at least as close together.
They look to be about 2 ft apart. That's pretty close. I think of that as being a Northern thing.
They're set back different distances, though.
There's a bit in one of Darwin's daughters' diaries that reminisces fondly about the toasted-brown lawns at Down House in summer.
Wales and Ireland probably have parts that are green year-round -- the one bit of Wales I saw was lovely green and gray in February, and the milk was heavenly -- but it's not the straightforward Anglophilia it looks like.
Looking at them again, though, they're definitely closer together than houses here.
I think of that as being a Northern thing.
Colorado was settled mainly by northerners.
I'm back and forth, as I take increasingly frequent and longer breaks from the front yard project.
I saw the Calitics piece, and think that the entire showdown is silly and unnecessary, unless one happens to think that we need new dams and there's no way the next democratic governor would support them. Also, if it rains this winter, any momentum for new dams would be lost. We'll worry about floods instead.
The houses in 31 wouldn't seem so close together if they weren't set back so far from the street. But that's probably related to perspective, not actual distances.
Well of course they're closer to each other than they are to you, Teo. Duh.
See, they don't seem set back very far to me.
This area has a ton of itty-bitty houses on decent-sized lots. But the houses themselves are...well, I described them upthread. But seriously, shoeboxes, some of them.
See, they don't seem set back very far to me.
As individual houses, no. But for houses that close together, they do seem set quite far back to me.
Get your peanut butter out of my chocolate. No, get your chocolate out of my peanut butter.
They're kind of stepped back, probably precisely because they're so close together. In contrast to the shoebox houses on big lots in heebie's area, these look like reasonably spacious houses on tiny lots.
Back from the botanic garden sale. Yield: a couple of gorgeous acacias, a tiny sedum (we are fools for sedum), a native grass (not for lawn, but for a clump), a dudleya, and a grenvillea that I am completely smitten with. And lots of photos of other candidate plants. Great idea, Megan!
I wouldn't want to live anywhere with lots of yards, but if you have to have one, a bit of nice soft grass to lie on seems like a good idea. My parents have a large steeply sloping lawn (by European standards) with breathtaking panoramic views of the lake and the Massif Mont Blanc. Wouldn't want to live there since I can't stand the exurbs, but it is rather nice for visits.
probably precisely because they're so close together.
So having houses at the end of what seem like long lawn hallways is good design? I guess my view is shaped by the fact that most of the houses on small lots I've seen have been right up to the sidewalk. You get more house out of your lot with no yard.
No front yard, that is. There are often narrow small backyards.
these look like reasonably spacious houses on tiny lots.
That appears to be a middle-class (as opposed to UMC) trend in places around me.
I have a 2000 sq ft 3-2 house (includes garage) on a 5000 sq ft lot and I see a lot of new developments that are 3000 sq ft houses (or even 4k with a 2nd story) on the same size lot.
Many have a 5-ton or 2 3-ton air conditioners.
111:See, I would rather have the yard with trees than have a 30 x 30 Great Room that needs air conditioning.
Are you really preferring the opposite?
Are you really preferring the opposite?
I'm thinking of urban residential blocks.
Talking about big houses, the NYT's Sunday Real Estate section always has a 'Living Here' feature about some city neighbourhood or suburban town. This week it was an expensive inner Jersey suburb. They started off with a couple that claimed they loved living in the city but couldn't afford it with their second child. OK, I get that - but not for folks who buy themselves a $1.5M home - 4000 sqft. For that price you can get a really, really nice three bedroom in a prime Brooklyn area. It won't be as big, but what on earth is a family of four supposed to do with that much space?
So having houses at the end of what seem like long lawn hallways is good design?
Certainly it wouldn't be my preference, but I can see how some people might prefer it. I doubt it's very common (at least, I can't recall any other examples), but if you want to live on a small lot and still feel like you have a lawn, as opposed to the more common tendency to build a house as big as possible on whatever size lot you have, it's one possible solution.
115:Ok, this is where I might be arguing with the urbanists.
A 2000 (or two story 3k) sq ft on a 3000 sq ft lot with no lawns or trees or bushes (but maybe a 1-acre corner park) does not strike me as particularly green, creating no shade or carbon sinks or heat/cold insulation.
Might work ok in cold climates, keeping heat to each other, but in warm/hot climates with lots of space surrounding each living space with carbon/heat sinks might be more efficient.
And as a matter of fact, inner Dallas circles are so frigging hot the rain moves around them due to the updraft.
A 2000 (or two story 3k) sq ft on a 3000 sq ft lot with no lawns or trees or bushes (but maybe a 1-acre corner park) does not strike me as particularly green, creating no shade or carbon sinks or heat/cold insulation.
Depends how you define "green." It may not provide as much carbon sequestration (though tree-lined streets can counteract that), but depending on insulation and various other factors it can easily use less energy overall. Not that it necessarily does, of course, and your point about warm v. cold climates is another thing to consider.
I think the urbanists would want smaller lots, not just houses that cover the lot, no matter the size.
Would anyone like a house that ringed the lot, with a court yard in the middle? I would.
Would anyone like a house that ringed the lot, with a court yard in the middle?
What, like a Roman atrium? Interesting...
I think the urbanists would want smaller lots, not just houses that cover the lot, no matter the size.
Urbanists tend to want both.
Close-together houses with few individual yards, and the occasional courtyards are all over some warm areas. The Mediterranean, for example. More "green"? I have no idea.
Or Pipe Spring! Fascinating place, btw. Definitely worth a stop if you're in the area.
(That was to text's courtyard idea.)
Would anyone like a house that ringed the lot, with a court yard in the middle? I would.
Yes! (I realize I'm lagging behind the comments here.)
Whether they're more green or not just depends on how high the ceilings are and how big the rooms, right? You might end up with narrower, longer rooms. Don't know how that cuts. And then if in the middle courtyard, you had a zoo! And solar panels.
Ok, let's all live in a house like that.
Would anyone like a house that ringed the lot, with a court yard in the middle? I would.
Hell, yes. As long as the house doesn't lose too much heat on the exposed surface area (or as long as I'm living somewhere hot), this sounds like a wonderful idea. Nude sunbathing forever!
Those are cool pictures, teo. I especially like the horsey and the tea cup. Where is Pipe Spring exactly?
So it looks like we're all going to live in a big naked house with a courtyard. Who's rooming with ToS?
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It's great! To be! A Florida Gator!
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Where is Pipe Spring exactly?
The Arizona Strip (i.e., the part of Arizona north of the Grand Canyon). It's most easily accessed from southwestern Utah. More info.
Also, I love those oddball houses that preserve the tree in the middle of them with a ring of glass, or the stream running through the middle of them. I would have loved to end up in something like that
124:40 years ago, when Dallas was young and the 2-3 story mega-apartment complexes were built, central or side courtyards like that, with added greenery, were the rule.
I don't get around as much, but I think that is still the pattern for apartments and small office complexes.
I'm not as okay with a stream running through the community home: MOSQUITO HAZARD.
In case anyone's wondering what text is talking about, here's the teacup (especially designed for the mustachioed gentleman) and here's the horsie. All of my Pipe Spring pictures here.
And as a matter of fact, inner Dallas circles are so frigging hot the rain moves around them due to the updraft.
Holy crap.
This can't be unique to Dallas, right? It would have to be all heavily-concreted urban areas? Dallas is garish, but garishness wouldn't affect the rain.
I'm not as okay with a stream running through the community home: MOSQUITO HAZARD.
What if it were a little trickle, and glassed over so that it was technically external to the house? I'd compromise.
Also at Pipe Spring: a little trickle of water from the spring running through the house. To run the dairy equipment, as well as for domestic water, IIRC.
This can't be unique to Dallas, right?
My sister the ecologist said that Sante Fe (I *think* it was Sante Fe!) was the canonical example of this because the roads were paved there so comparatively late and the population growth was so sudden. Apparently the city creates a heat column that actually diverts rain away: a nasty feedback cycle that the data is pretty clear about.
When I looked around those Pipe Spring photos, Teo, I was thinking that there was one Mormon patriarch who decided to embrace the old gibe that Mormons were like Muslims. That building is totally an American Casbah.
136:Not just the concrete and asphalt, but the multi-story apartment complexes and the mid-height 5-10 story office buildings.
They have massive air-conditioners on the roofs sending the heat straight up.
Ten miles away from centre Dallas is usually 5-10 degrees cooler.
People (dogs) and appliances generate heat. 55 degrees outside right now, windows open creating drafts, 67 in the house.
Ten miles away from centre Dallas is usually 5-10 degrees cooler.
Now this is always true of country vs. city.
141: It was a pretty common layout for Mormon frontier settlements at the time, as I understand it. Most of them either failed and were abandoned or succeeded and became actual towns, so there's no trace of them today. Pipe Spring was in this weird in-between state, so it survived intact until the Park Service took it over. The history of the place is really interesting.
But also, cities handle rain really badly. So maybe everything is copacetic.
Whoops. Santa Fe.
That's better. And yeah, I don't know about the heat column thing, but it was definitely rather late to the paved-streets bandwagon.
It was a pretty common layout for Mormon frontier settlements at the time, as I understand it.
Huh! If that's true (which of course I have no reason to doubt), then it really might have been centrally designed! Brother Brigham loved planning shit like that (his family were furniture-makers and he was famous for not only urban planning but micromanaging every goddamn little detail).
Actually, I have a real-life book ten feet away I could consult. So...far...away...
Who's rooming with ToS?
read? That's in the time out wing.
I haven't looked at all the pictures of Pipe Spring, but the linked picture in 124: the courtyard has no vegetation. That is sad. Have floor tiles gone out of style? Perhaps the other Pipe Spring pictures show vegetation; but it is in Arizona, after all.
I don't think there's any real dispute that Young personally directed the Mormon colonization down to the smallest details.
the courtyard has no vegetation
Well, the thing was basically a fort, so landscaping was probably not the highest priority. And no, there's not much vegetation in any of the other pictures either.
144:Ten miles away from central Dallas in any direction is hardly country. Ten miles North is still pretty high density, but in every other direction it is mostly a matter of lower density development.
As far as concrete/asphalt vs high-density, it would be useful to check out the airport temperatures vs inner circle Dallas or Allen or up 75.
I really rather dislike nature-reclaiming-old-buildings by the way; it always seems like such a terrible failure and just a wee bit Speerian when I think about it.
There have got to be some awesome Brigham Young-on-architecture documents around somewhere.
I see I do need to look at the other pictures of Pipe Spring.
teo and others of an architectural/planning bent, I guess you're familiar with a book called A Pattern Language?
There have got to be some awesome Brigham Young-on-architecture documents around somewhere.
I'm sure. The whole Mormon planning and architectural tradition is really fascinating, and it doesn't seem to get much attention.
teo and others of an architectural/planning bent, I guess you're familiar with a book called A Pattern Language?
Yeah, it's pretty well-known, but it doesn't seem to have made much of an impact within the field, at least as far as I can tell. But design's not really my thing, so maybe I just haven't noticed. I haven't read it.
It's a pretty fun, absorbing read; it doesn't have to be read in sequence, chapter by chapter, and isn't designed that way. It's not even remotely my field, but yeah, it's really quite great. Fully accessible to the layperson.
I've been intrigued by it, but it's really expensive. (Or at least, it has been in every bookstore where I've seen it; that Amazon link has what looks like a much more reasonable price.)
Arrington talks a bit about the structure of the Beehive House and the Lion House, but it's a bit frustratingly vague. No mention of an interior courtyard (and I don't recall one from my visit). Apparently he did advise his colonists first to build "forts" as a matter of course and even specified how high and thick the walls should be in each individual case and of what material. The Arizona settlements were ordered in the last year of his life, as he was beginning to decline and as the federal government was closing in. It's possible that less attention was paid, but also that the people who went to Arizona were veteran colonists.
159: I was a little surprised by the Amazon prices, thinking they were high. I didn't realize the book was so apparently desirable. I've passed by a copy or two in my travels. Anyway, I'll hang on to them in future. For friends, you see.
It's the Arizona forts specifically that had the courtyard shape; the museum in Winslow even has a plan of the original fort that looks nearly identical to Pipe Spring, although it housed several families and must have been considerably. My recollection of the explanation there is that all of the Arizona settlements were originally forts with that same plan. I think only Joseph City and Winslow ended up succeeding, and I don't think there's anything left of the original fort at either.
This would be an interesting paper topic. Too bad I already have topics for all my papers this semester.
I'll hold onto the idea for future paper-writing opportunities.
And solar panels.
I was at a delightful zoning hearing recently at which the first public testimony was an earnest young man who inquired as to his "legal right to sunlight." I did not immediately understand that he was serious until he clarified that his concern was investing in solar panels and then having a neighbor who decided to put up a third story (or a clothesline, which seems a bit less persuasive).
But yeah. Legal rights to sunlight, indeed. Hm.
But yeah. Legal rights to sunlight, indeed. Hm.
Probably exists in some places. There are view rights, air rights, etc. so why not a sunlight right?
Legal rights to sunlight, indeed.
It's beginning to become a real issue as photovoltaic systems are becoming more common. I don't know if any courts have heard cases or decided on the legal issues, though.
To clarify, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to idea. It was phrased in a rather adversarial way, but the gist of the question seems reasonable.
(Although all of the actual, real-life people I know who have litigated over view rights were in fact jerks.)
It's certainly an interesting issue. What sort of rights to sunlight does a property owner have? Especially given that there can be rather substantial sums of money involved.
Hm. Right on cue, here comes the NYT with an article on the legal battle over clotheslines. (Hint: Environmentalists and old-timers vs. "Property values!" class concerns.)
There's also this outrageous claim:
Jeanne Bridgforth, a real estate agent in Richmond, Va., said that while she had no personal opinion on clotheslines, most of her clients were not thrilled with the idea of seeing their neighbors' underwear blowing in the breeze.
She recalled how she was unable to sell a beautifully restored Victorian home in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond because it looked out onto a neighbor's laundry hanging from a second-story back porch. In June, the house went into foreclosure.
I'm a credulous reporter, I am, I am. There couldn't possibly be another reason the house didn't sell, right? Lowering the price not an option?
I saw that. If there was ever a dispute in which it was easy to take sides...
Don't hang you clothes on my solar panels, Witt.
I must admit that if the real estate agent had said that to me, my inner imp would have been severely tempted to ask innocently why they didn't just ask the neighbor if their stager could put more tasteful and appropriate laundry up on the day of the open house.
Properly stylish hipster knickers or whatnot would probably have increased the sale price, what with provoking the whole Whoo-eee, I'm gonna get laid! vibe. Or I don't know; maybe single people don't move in to Church Hill.
(Although all of the actual, real-life people I know who have litigated over view rights were in fact jerks.)
I'm guessing you'd probably have sided with Nicolas Yung, though.
There's these string pulley rod thingies that are installed over bathtubs that are ubiquitous in East Central Europe. No worries about neighbours. Though I do find the airshaft clotheslines you can see in NYC rather esthetically fun.
In British law, there seems to be big deal about so-called party walls; there was a Party Wall act of 1996, all of which has do with walls adjoining buildings. In any event, party wall law seems to be a bit of thing in England, which leads me to this, on rights to light. It somewhat amusingly, or archaically, or puzzlingly, mentions this rule of thumb, dating from 1904:
Once a right to light exists the owner of the right is entitled to "sufficient light according to the ordinary notions of mankind"
Turns out the ordinary notions have come into question nowadays, and "the "ancient lights" doctrine has been unanimously repudiated in the United States."
Not that solar panels necessarily have to do with ancient lights.
I got the impression that outside clotheslines are prohibited in some parts of northern Europe. I asked someone about it at a hostel I was staying in because I was struck by the disappearance of publicly visible clothesdrying as I headed north, and the answer I got was that it was a weird question and I was a strange person for asking it.
179: I don't know about the technical terms, but in the late 19th/early 20th century concern about light in apartment buildings in the U.S. centered on health concerns - the idea being to outlaw tenements where people lived without indoor access to natural light.
181: I take it the attempts to outlaw these things failed in the long run.
In urban area you see them all the time on balconies, in the burbs they're often in yards in Switzerland and Germany. What's interesting about Europe is that while washers are standard, dryers are somewhat of a luxury.
181 The airshaft phenomenon in NYC is a direct result of those regulations, aimed at tenement housing, as is the ubiquity of 'home offices' i.e. windowless rooms in apartments which by law can't be called bedrooms. Though I remember an ex's groundfloor apartment in Manhattan. The first night we spent there, early September, we wake up - it's still dark. Ok, go back to sleep. We wake up again, still dark. By the third time, with no interest in sleep, we check the time - noon. It was a beautiful sunny day, but that room got no light whatsoever.
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I didn't think the U.S. would win in Honduras but apparently they have. Can't believe it wasn't on tv. Now we'll have to endure more annoying soccer hype in the lead up to the World Cup. At least the World Cup itself should be interesting.
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184: Watched the last part on a crappy Spanish-language live stream. Kind of a wild game at the end. Honduras missed a PK badly in the last few minutes.
There was one place here in town playing it--but $15 cover charge!
It was 3-2, PK in 87th minute would have tied it.
Well, going with the OP, while I do have a TV it's an ancient analogue and I have no cable. DVD screen in other words.
Somewhere in the vastness of the internet I encountered someone insisting that VHS is always a better way to watch movies than DVD. This seems... difficult to justify.
VHS is always a better way to watch movies than DVD. This seems... difficult to justify.
I dunno, I could make a pretty strong argument. The sheer utility of being able to to take the thing out of one VCR and put it in another (or put it back in the same one months later after a power outage) without losing your place is significant. And fast-forwarding and rewinding are both far more predictable (this scene-selection stuff is for the birds).
And although I have many times had to fiddle with the tracking control or thump the VCR to get it to work, it's nothing compared to the DVD skips, hops, refusals to play, etc.
Of course, at present I don't own a DVD player (aside from my laptop, which I don't use for that purpose). I don't know if that makes me more or less objective.
Oh! I almost forgot the most important part of all: That @^&$)($(*!$(#&T!(#%*!&!%! technologically enforced practice of MAKING you watch the #!&^$(!%&!#%&! previews....doesn't happen on VHS.
The super cool new house I'm (presumably, actually?) moving into is kind of a courtyard house. it has shared walls on both sides, on the one side just the central part, and on the other side a row of small rooms going back (an L shape). a high wall separates the neighbors' courtyard from ours. that little back courtyard is where the (small) pool is, as well as the palm-frond-covered hut thing, with a ceiling fan and teak day beds.
I'm pretty sure rental copies of VHS movies sometimes had previews. But they couldn't disable the fast forward.
Another point in favor of VHS for quite a while was that it was easier to record things. I guess recording tv has gotten easier now on DVD - but still not a standard feature of a DVD player.
The case for VHS over DVD is pretty weak when you start to include subtitles/captioning in multiple languages, audio tracks, features, picture quality, etc.
The sheer utility of being able to to take the thing out... without losing your place is significant.
Hmm. I can see that one.
And fast-forwarding and rewinding are both far more predictable (this scene-selection stuff is for the birds).
This I don't get. With DVDs you can fast-forward or rewind just as with a tape, or you can jump between scenes. If you don't like the scene-selection, stick with ordinary fast-forward or rewind.
Do they actually force you to let the previews run? I usually press the remote's "top menu" button or similar and break out of it. Maybe that doesn't work on all players.
My housemate's Xbox 360, which I'm using these days, actually remembers where you were between different instances of putting the DVD in.
That @^&$)($(*!$(#&T!(#%*!&!%! technologically enforced practice of MAKING you watch the #!&^$(!%&!#%&! previews
There are players that don't do this; software players especially (virtually anything open-source for a start), but even hardware players exist that ignore the user operation prohibition flags. They usually don't mention that explicitly in the copy, but most of the region-free players don't enforce them.
I don't know about the technical terms, but in the late 19th/early 20th century concern about light in apartment buildings in the U.S. centered on health concerns - the idea being to outlaw tenements where people lived without indoor access to natural light.
It's also, of course, why Manhattan looks like it does.
(The shape of the early/mid 20th century skyscrapers being determined in part by law forcing stepbacks as you went higher and higher.)
NZ has some sort of right to sunlight I think --- I think it turns up in RMA hearings & district plans, but don't quote me on that.
I didn't think the U.S. would win in Honduras but apparently they have. Can't believe it wasn't on tv. Now we'll have to endure more annoying soccer hype in the lead up to the World Cup. At least the World Cup itself should be interesting.
I didn't think the All Whites would get a draw in Bahrain, to be honest, but now we're 90 minutes away from South Africa. (& I'm tempted by going up to wgtn for the home leg.)
IIRC, parts of Florida have protected daylight (and then people need shade plants and/or giant blinds), but Seattle doesn't (despite sometimes having view rights). This seems backwards to me.
The Los Angeles Public Library main branch, in order to raise funds for renovation, sold its air rights - I think this just meant the right to build up, but it could have had a light component - to some neighboring buildings. So lots of the library is underground. That might have turned out better with better design, but the escalator/stairway section is really pretty ugly. The older parts of the building, above ground, are quite nice and the stacks are no worse than stacks elsewhere. I've only been there once, though.
The British climate is indeed lawn friendly. Our backgarden has a nice lawn that requires nothing more the occasional cutting. Grows like a bastard in summer, though, and cutting is a chore.
re: 99
It gets a little dry/faded in summer, but it wouldn't require excessive watering to keep it green except in a particularly hot/dry summer. Back in Scotland it's pretty much cornucopian levels of lushness all year round.
198: Hm; was Down House somewhere particularly sunny, or was she remembering an unusual summer? Too lazy to look it up.
From my favorite piece of childhood, northwest of Seattle, I hold that it's not worth having a lawn if it isn't grazed: a) wasting land, and b), will never be the apotheosis of turf it should be.
I had a crazy great-uncle who dealt with the lawn problem by laying down gravel and painting it green. Once he cottoned to the potential of the gravel + paint approach he decided to put in a stream and a little bridge over the stream so visitors wouldn't get their feet wet.
198: I can believe that, in a hot summer in southern England: when we had a very hot, dry summer in 2005 Hyde Park was burnt brown and looked, from the air, like an African savannah.
This would never happen in (eg) Argyll.
re: 199
Oh I'm sure she's right. In a dry/hot summer lawns can get very dry/brown and Down House is in a sunny-ish part of the UK. It just wouldn't necessarily happen every year.
I hate yards, mostly because they seem absurdly difficult to maintain, all for a very dull look. plus mowing is loud and i dislike lawn smell (=bad green tea) and makes my skin itch.
I sort of would like them if they were maintained by roving neighborhood cattle/goat herds. or even if all the grass clippings got sent to local farmers.
I hate yards, mostly because they seem absurdly difficult to maintain, all for a very dull look. plus mowing is loud and i dislike lawn smell (=bad green tea) and makes my skin itch.
I sort of would like them if they were maintained by roving neighborhood cattle/goat herds. or even if all the grass clippings got sent to local farmers.
i do like some yard elements, not 100% against non-house lot area. gramps brings up a few boxes of tangerines/oranges from his trees in the yard every xmas,