In a radio interview recently I heard a man explaining that he had to have a manicured green lawn because, like his necktie, it was the first and most lasting impression he gives to the world. I wondered first of all, how many people would admire his necktie if they knew it was giving the man cancer, his children learning disabilities, his wife infertility, his neighbor's infant seizures, and polluting his public drinking water supply? But then I thought about it a little, and I really had to wonder how many people would have a good impression of a man who wore the same plain old green necktie, day after day after day?

So there are really two issues here. The first is that pesticides (which include herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and other chemicals to control, kill or repel pests), are poisons, plain and simple. If you even doubt this for a moment, let it be known that there are thousands of scientific studies showing the harmful effects of pesticides. The National Institutes for Health just published a couple more. One showed a common weed killer combination, used on some Wellesley lawns to kill dandelions, to be linked to failed pregnancies in laboratory animals at extremely low doses [September, 2002]. The other showed that the use of indoor professional pest-control services at any time from one year before birth to three years after was associated with a significantly increased risk of childhood leukemia [August, 2002]. If you want more references on adverse effects of pesticides, check out www.pesticide.org for public fact sheets. Or better yet, browse the Federal Government's Environmental Health Perspectives website, http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov, for basic research papers.

The second issue, which I think is fundamentally much more important than the first, is that far too many people here in America are afraid of nature. They are not afraid of serious stuff like lions and tigers and rabid skunks. They are afraid of regular old suburban nature like crickets and toads and earwigs.

My children are like that. They jump when they see an ant, scream when a bee lands on them, react in disgust when a piece of grass tickles their leg, and totally freak out when a slug leaves it's distinctive trail across the sidewalk. I can work with my children. I do that by getting them used to their non-vertebrate neighbors. We make bridges and cities for the ants, we talk to the bee and gently move it away, we pick the grass and make a bracelet, and we rescue the slug and put it under some moist leaves. But what can we do about all those adults who managed to avoid nature by going from sterile home to sterile car to sterile school to sterile office and suddenly they are grown up and afraid of little bugs?

Don't get me wrong. Bugs aren't allowed to take up residence in my house. Nor Japanese beetles on my young blueberry bushes. Nor slugs on my lettuce. But I have learned that to really control a beast you have to understand what it wants it first. And they are a lot less scary when you understand them (usually). An added benefit to understanding your pests is that you never have to use pesticides. There are always ways to turn a pest's habits against itself. (See, for example, the book "Tiny Game Hunting" by Hilary Klein and Adrian Wenner, 2001).

We all have the same goal: to relax, enjoy life, protect our health, save money, save time, play with the kids, pets, the usual stuff. We all want to live in a relatively benign environment. The trick to achieving this is to understand your local ecosystem well enough to create a safe backyard, without working too hard at it. Ideally, one which sustains its health, beauty and safety without much intervention. Luckily, with the dire wolf, the sabre tooth tiger, and wooly mammoth all killed off long ago, it's relatively easy to do this.

For many, lawns are the answer. Lawns, for goodness sake. Of course, you can have an organic lawn without all the chemicals, but the typical modern lawn is so uninteresting, and so much work. The only excuse I can think of for a lawn is if you have children. But then, that's also a good excuse not to have a lawn, since children will find a piece of wild turf infinitely more interesting. In our home we have a mix. On our small lot we have 1) raised beds for vegetables for the kids, 2) wild "meadow," 3) shady leaves/dirt, and 4) trample lawn. I call it trample lawn because we don't mow it much. If the kids use it a lot, it gets trampled down and looks like a lawn. If they don't use it, it grows up and looks more like meadow. One square yard of our yard is more diverse, interesting and biologically active than 1/4 acre of manicured, insecticided, herbicided, and short-cropped lawn.

I think, though, that my neighborhood here in suburbia finds our yard a little frightening. The other day a neighbor's 5 year old child ran screaming from our yard because a dragonfly had landed on a dried flower stalk nearby. I took him aside and explained that the dragon fly is a b-e-n-e-f-i-c-i-a-l insect, that it wouldn't hurt him, and that he was ever so lucky to have it land near enough to see its beautiful compound eyes. I'm not going to have my neighbor's children grow up to be afraid of suburban wildlife, either.

In 1503, the German artist Albrecht Durer created a much admired watercolor called "The Great Piece of Turf" that accurately details all the plants growing in a small section of earth (Massachusetts Audubon's Sanctuary, Autumn, 2002). It looks very much like an overlooked section of someone's backyard today (in fact, it looks a lot like my own backyard). It even has dandelions in it. I think it would make a beautiful necktie.

Sarah Little, Ph.D., is the Wellesley Pesticide Awareness Coordinator and runs the Wellesley Pesticide Awareness Campaign. The campaign receives support from the town of Wellesley, the Toxics Use Reduction Institute, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and citizen volunteers. This work has received awards from the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the Massachusetts Senate, and the Toxics Action Center. Volunteers are helping to educate the community about ways we can protect ourselves, our drinking water, and our environment from pesticide exposure. The campaign is actively seeking more volunteers for community outreach. Wellesley residents are welcome to attend one of the bi-monthly meetings at the Town Hall. Please contact the Wellesley Natural Resources Commission, 781-431-1019 x294 for dates and times.