I have a relatively flat side yard that is roughly 100 by 60 feet. I'm really not a fan of mowing the lawn. I find it:
1. a wasteful use of fossil fuel.
2. land upon which you could instead have food bearing plants.
3. land which could instead be a habitat for wildlife.
4. Fascist? What exactly is so nice about having each blade of grass exactly the same height anyway? It's almost like a pseudo-moon landscape. I find it creepy. Like from a wrinkle in time when each boy stands in the driveway of each house bouncing a ball in time with each other. Much creepier are all the old lawn nazis who seem to go around at night with a tape measure into their neighbor's yards. And personally a field just of tall grass looks far nicer to me.

I had further read a book saying that replacing your grass with a garden (preferably right there in the front yard) was a sort of revolutionary action at the local level, (which is the only place where you can do anything worthwhile thanks to corporate news media.) (Except you can't ever do anything worthwhile.)

Occasionally I've pointed these things out to the potato people and they scream, "Snakes!" It's very hard to believe that's really why they're so militant about their grass, and the idea that they would lie and give that as the reason when it's really... what? Kind of pisses me off...

Anwyay, my wife unfortunately is somewhat the same and so it's been somewhat of a battle to try to put stuff in place of this vast expanse of grass. So far though I've cut out a 15 by 25 foot section with a pond. Which, for all her past arguing, she certainly likes to go out to it multiple times per day to feed the fish.

Secondly I've planted 5 trees. The deer destroyed the japanese maple. Half the kwanzan has been eaten by the deer. The apple tree is mostly eaten and looks to just be barely hanging on. The ten foot tall red maple doesn't look as good this year as last. Not sure why. Possibly because the soil doesn't drain well here. The weeping willow... I should have learned about the different types of willows. The trunk of this one is almost like bamboo, which wasn't what I wanted. I thought that was just how they look when young, but no. Also the wind, (even with staking it) is really pushing it. And willows fall over easily. I did fence in the willow as otherwise I'm sure it'd be dead. Still the deer have repeatedly destroyed parts of the fencing, despite using very strong metal stakes.

Finally I went and bought a red maple that's more than 15 feet tall. I'm worried though the awful drainage will cause the roots to rot. But I do have a really nice large red maple on the other side of the house. Which Asplund is planning to take a large chunk out of because it's close to power lines and the potato people lawn nazis next door complained to the power company because of some fight they're having with other neighbors about leaves blowing into their yard.

Gee, it's kind of annoying if I write it all down at once and I even left some stuff out.

But now I'm taking another chunk out of this massive useless yard. I'm putting up a 20 by 18 foot section raised bed garden section. With deer fence around it. Raised because the soil acidity isn't quite right for blueberry bushes. Fence because the entire thing would otherwise be gone by the very next morning. Two 12x4 foot raised beds in the middle and a two feet wide one all around the outer perimeter. Probably will mostly be perennials/berry bushes as I don't actually like gardening quite all that much. But, happy today to be getting rid of more useless lawn.