Around this time of year, I’m glad to bid adieu to winter and welcome the season of gin and tonics in the yard. But then I think about the yard and then I think about the lawn and then I remember lawnmowers and the chore and noise of lawncare.

One solution to that particular summer chore: a lawnmower with a cupholder.

But there’s a better solution. It’s called a meadow.

Every lawn longs to be a meadow. That’s why we mow them — to crush their dream, to cut them down to size, to flagellate them to conformity.

And we dump poison on them to kill their uppity dandelions. We cast chemicals upon them to make them grow faster so we can mow them more. We wage war on the moles and voles.

Why? Mainly to prove ourselves superior to nature and neighbors, as if we are what we mow.

I don’t want to be what I mow. I want to be what I don’t mow. I want to be the unmowed — a meadow.

Every yard has room for meadow. A meadow can be three feet across or the full length of a yard. Think of it as a lawn you don’t need to mow or a garden you don’t need to till, weed, or water. If you absolutely must establish your dominance, put a little fence around it. Then just leave it there, looking nice.

How nice? Well, just wait and see. Let it become what it becomes. Appreciate the special beauty of it — the shapes and hues of the grass, the way it drapes, the unexpected, unpredicted arrival of wildflowers — the same flowers you used to think of as evil weeds.

The word for those flowering weeds is “forbs.” Local forbs include some of the prettiest names in all flowerdom: baby blue eyes, shirley poppy, gloriosa daisy, candytuft, baby’s breath, love in a mist and sweet william.

You can buy such seeds or just wait until they find their way to your meadow.

Your meadow becomes a garden of its own making. The longer you let your meadow be — months, years — the more your forbs.

And the more your forbs, the more your fauna. Yes, insects, of course, but so what? If they like meadow, they stay in meadow. And then your meadow becomes a bird feeder. The birds bring beauty and music.

Did you know that you can buy recordings of birdsong? But you can’t buy recordings of lawnmower song. That’s something to think about while you’re sitting near your meadow, nursing your G&T, watching your meadow grow as you listen to your unenlightened neighbor mow her unenlightened lawn.

Here’s something else you might not know: Yard irrigation accounts for a third of all residential water use, a national average of nine billion gallons a day. And half of it evaporates or runs off unused because lawns aren’t especially good at sucking up water.

You want water sucked up, get a meadow.

Another fun fact: America has 63,000 square miles of lawn — roughly 13 times the size of Connecticut. Turf is the most widespread irrigated crop in the country.

And yet another: 25 percent of Democrats, but only 16 percent of Republicans, say lawn mowing is their least favorite chore. One out of five Americans would prefer to shovel snow.

And another: Each weekend, 54 million Americans mow their lawns, burning 800 million gallons of gas. According to the EPA, American mowists spill more gas in a year than the Exxon Valdez spilled into the Gulf of Alaska.

And another: one lawnmower operating for an hour produces more volatile organic compounds (e.g. carbon dioxide) and nitrogen oxides (the stuff of smog) as 11 new cars driving for an hour.

I know what you’re thinking: deer ticks. You think they’re coming to get you.

Well they’re not. They like a shady, humid area of tall vegetation. Ticks don’t pursue.

They wait.

Sure, they might like a meadow — if deer take them there — but there ain’t no tick alive who’s going to leave a meadow to come looking for you.

And if you’re still scared, mow a band of lawn around your meadow. It doesn’t have to be much. Ticks are tiny. They can’t walk far. A little lawn’s a lightyear to them.

So this summer, do yourself — and your world — a favor. Plant yourself a meadow.

Then go plant yourself near the meadow. Watch it grow and change. Appreciate it. Sip your gin and appreciate what you’re not doing.

Glenn Alan Cheney is a writer, translator, and managing editor of New London Librarium. He can be reached at glenn@NLLibrarium.com.