Frazz by Jef Mallett for August 07, 2023

Not all of them backfire. But they’ll do it at the worst possible time, and likely it’ll be one you didn’t even NOTICE was an out of date gender role expectation.

Not every is based on logic. A happy wife is a priority!

Inclusiveness includes traditional arrangements too.

Hidden in there is the idea that it’s women that want to keep the grounds looking neat.

I always find it kind of funny when people mow their lawns in the middle of a heatwave and then complain that the grass dies and gets all brown.

Exactly! In upper Illinois, we had a very bad dry spell, until the end of June. Yet, every week, there they were, out mowing their poor lil lawns into oblivion. We leave ours go until the start of June, for the early pollinator insects, so we mowed twice to clear the dandelion heads b/f the seeds all drifted off & that’s that. We have a very green & healthy lawn & everyone else still has scruffy looking, patchy lawns with brown spots.

You keep grocery shopping because you actually need food. You don’t need a trimmed lawn.

But I’ve never understood the lawn thing. You could have trees and flowers and benches, plus a small patch of lawn to sit in. Your own park. Instead, people want a blank, monotonous green carpet than needs constant work. I don’t get it.

Way too much lawn mowing on way too much lawn. Save the planet!

XERISCAPING would take care of that !

I didn’t get it either, especially pushing a reel-type mower through the family’s weed ranch @95 df.

Dad should have his son mow it.

This doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with gender roles and everything to do with laziness

Yeah let’s have mom mow the lawn and dad do the grocery shopping.

Frazz usually makes a point. This lead-up comments have nothing to do with gender roles.

Gender roles exist for a reason. Not everybody can do everything. There isn’t enough time. And women have different strengths than men do. We’re all different, not identical widgets.

Up to a point: Overgrown lawns are breeding havens for ticks and other things you don’t want near your home.

I do the shopping and the lawn work at our house. She’d love to do the mowing, but nobody touches my John Deere but me…

The lawn observation in the first panel is also true for hair, fingernails, toenails, dust, dirty clothes, and dirty dishes. Just don’t cut or clean anything.

I would think that, by now, Frazz would be converting his lawn into a pollinator garden with low-maintenance native species.

As my husband’s Alzheimer’s has advanced, I have taken on the things that he used to do. There aren’t enough hours in the day, and I know my limitations, so I hire people to do what I can’t/don’t have time for. Gender roles are irrelevant — knowing how to do things and knowing enough to hire someone competent to do the things you can’t do is something everyone needs to be able to do.

Sadly, groceries don’t grow back.

“And why get a vaccination when they’re just going to tell you to get a booster next year?”

Yeah, I know people who make that argument.

All of human history can be viewed in the context of our being unwitting pawns in the planet’s longest-running war — the one between the trees and the grasses — the former bribing us with fruits and nuts and the latter with grains and roots into supporting their own long-range quest for world domination.

Vegetation control is an endless job.