The Dangers of Edging

This being Treebarkhelmet's first safety post, I want to write about an issue that has been grating on me for some time. And that issues is edging. How often have you been walking down the street, your eyes fixated on the edging? The diversity of edges? Some overgrown, some insanely trenched? How often did you look at certain lawns and think to yourself, "reckless vanity!" I am honestly surprised that my local congressman hasn't taken to heart the obvious danger deep edging poses to children and the elderly.

Would you leave a bunch of cracks in the sidewalk? No, of course not! You'd let them fill up with grass as nature dictates. As everyone knows, grass is a natural safety mechanism. Just as there is good fungus and bad fungus living inside each of us, so there is bad crab grass (the kind that climbs on walls, also known as ivy) and good crab grass, which plays a significant role in safeguarding the footfalls of the feeble and stupid.

Today, on my daily excursion around the block, I kept a lookout for examples of dangerous edging. My neighbors are generally safety-conscious people and so let their grass grow to a reasonable extent out onto the sidewalk to insure for safe foot traffic by the ignorant (children) and the rundown (the elderly).

An example of well-maintained edging.


There were, however, some glaring examples of reckless edge work.

It's as if the owner of these edges went just about as far as he could without directly spitting in our faces.


What kind of person digs edging like this?


I succeeded in getting a close up before the owner chased me away. Up close, this edging might be as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon! It may not seem like that to you, but that's how it feels for the old person or child that will inevitably fall victim.


I encountered some lawn maintenance people and was careful to harangue them on the necessity of letting the grass assume its natural safety function least they get carried away and dig deep, medieval moat-like trenches that extend inches and inches beneath sidewalk level, creating veritable gauntlets for oblivious pedestrians.


Grass as a natural, and renewable, source of safety.


As a society, it's time we wake up and recognize the danger reckless edging constitutes. And of course the best way to encourage edge safety is to educate children while they are still young, while their brains have the consistency of silly putty, the kind you rub against a newspaper when you want to make a fun little copy. Contrary to popular, big business-driven beliefs which seek to ram different notions of edge morality down our throats, lawn edge safety starts with the children in the classroom.

Another fact about grass is that it creates convenient lanes in the sidewalk. The grass demarks my lane so that I know where to walk and so that I do not intrude onto the lanes of my fellow pedestrians.


Of course, we need to also respect the constitutional Right Of Doing Whatever You Want On Your Property. We as a society should not force the compliance of property owners, rather, we should twist everyone's arm by making adequate signage mandatory so as to cull the attention of unwitting, foot dragging pedestrians who may be at risk of cataclysmic encounters with brazen edging not to mention the evil redicule of ignorant lawnmen themselves chuckling, concealed behind shrubbery.