People who know nothing about ecology hear about something that requires no work or understanding on their part but where they can "spread awareness online": "YES THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER."
Applies to more than just ecological activism, of course
Rather than saying "I'm not going to mow for a month!" take a while and actually learn what is in your yard. Don't just hop on arbitrary bandwagons with no understanding of what you are looking at
You can do significant damage to your ecological system by just doing things like "not mowing" arbitrarily, especially depending on where you live. You can also cause more damage by leading various things in the environment to "take shelter" in your yard and then resuming mowing come June.
What's more, just letting things grow will usually invite in invasives and noxious weeds and will promote invasive monocultures.
Grass laws are terrible, but "ignore it" isn't the solution.
Learn about native plants, learn about noxious weeds, learn about water conservation in lawn building, look into strategies like xeriscaping. If you need a lawn then look into local grasses and legumes
Be prepared for this to take a long, long time/
You may have to water, you will have to do maintenance, but it will be better for the environment than just letting your lawn go with whatever invasives happen to be in your area
If you need to keep a lawn for your HOA there may be nothing you can do about it, but again the solution is not "just let whatever grow" (if you would even be allowed to do that, many of them specify grasses).
The solution is learning the soil, learning the land, and learning the plants.
@hrefna It all takes such a long time, to even learn and build a solid intuition for plants. As my dad always says about gardening: "the hardest part of learning it is that every experiment takes a year."
I've been learning pasture management and it is a lot. As you say a lot of it is building a solid intuition about plants (and conquering "green blindness," but that goes along with developing that intuition).
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