My wife and I bought our house about a year and a half ago - we live in Austin (been here 10 years now) and grew up on the Texas coast where it rains more regularly and it's no big deal to have lush green, "well kept" lawns. But I also spent a lot of time outside in areas that weren't lawns (National ans State Parks and the Nature Conservancy), and to be quite honest, I hate the traditional green postage stamp with a monoculture of St Augustine, interspersed with this and that, but maintained by Miracle Grow and pesticide. Part of my favorite memories growing up were catching toads under the slab on the back of the house and green anoles all over. My wife just had our first baby, and I'd like him to have the same experience, but I have some thoughts on the big picture.

While we do have green anoles here, we also have Texas Spiny Lizards, and skinks of all types under every rock. When we first moved in to our house, we saw a road runner in the back yard a few times, but we don't see him any more. My conundrum is this - I want my child to be safe in the yard, but I also want him to see nature as nature, not as a golf course type setting. I realize that from a bigger standpoint, part of what makes life beautiful and worth doing is that nothing is guaranteed. I've had ticks before on scout camping trips and family backpacking trips, and I don't think they're a big deal, but I also really don't want to do a tick check every time I come in from the back yard, and my dog came in with one on his ear the other day. It should be noted that I like my grass about 8 inches in height because it reminds me of the sea of grass around Wind Cave National Park when the wind blows through and you can see the gusts in that huge green expanse, like waves on the ocean. I also plan on replacing whatever it is I have now with a native "lawn mix" like they espouse at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, for several reasons including environmental suitability and responsible water usage.

So my question is this - when it comes to pest control, if I go buy some tick poison at the hardware store, I'm also poisoning a bunch of other insects, many of which are beneficial, as well as the area where my dog, my son and I are going to spend some of our time, and I'm sure that there is some run off (I know about waiting until rain is not in the forecast for 24 hours). Even those insects that are not immediately perceived as beneficial, like ants, are part of the food chain below other awesome things I want to preserve, like the Texas Spiny Lizard, grass snakes, and those skinks, which in turn feed roadrunners. Is there a responsible alternative to the big brand "Kills 10,000 Different Types of Critters!" pest control? I'm not a hippie because that implies doobious (see what I did there?) decision making and thought processes, but I also know that the status quo is fundamentally flawed due to it's oversight concerning a more complete understanding of the system on which it is dependent. What I want is a genuine discussion on responsible yard stewardship. Not maintenance, because environmental systems generally do that themselves, and it's only when we interfere with those time tested processes that different parts of the system start to beak down.