04/15/2008
Massive Idaho 'Lawn Topiary' Won't Go Away
Last July, some prankster teens created a 60-foot "sculpture" on the lawn of the Governor's Mansion in Boise, Idaho, with weed killer and workers have not found a way to take care of it:
"The area was recently replanted with grass seedlings and covered with straw. A previous attempt by landscapers to obliterate the image only enhanced it with a dark green outline, after which it was covered with a bright blue tarpaulin for several weeks. 'Humor is humor, and people can laugh and we move on,' Rick Phillips, communications director for J.R. Simplot Co., told the Idaho Statesman. The grassy graffiti appeared in July after someone applied extra-strength weed killer. Officials said at the time it was too late in the growing season to attempt to remove the image. Snow hid the oversized phallus over the winter, but when it emerged again in the spring some neighbors had had enough....The affected part of the hillside belongs to Simplot, an agricultural conglomerate which donated the hilltop mansion to the state in 2004. The mansion is currently unoccupied because Gov. C.L. 'Butch' Otter lives on his ranch in Star."
I hear there's a departing U.S. Senator from Idaho who would just love a neat place to retire. I'm sure he could take care of it.
AFTER THE JUMP, the agricultural art in its previous incarnation...
Giant phallus etched below Idaho guv's mansion removed [idaho statesman]
(image source)
Posted 8:58 AM EST by Andy in Idaho, News | Permalink
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The easiest way to make this "disappear" is more weedkiller (or hell, a rototiller) in an abstract pattern around the original "design." Some swooshes, some brush strokes, and loops and the image will disappear into a tableau. Then work to wipe out the whole area in a massive replanting of the whole rectangular area in the spring.
Or you can do what these numbnuts are doing and end up calling more attention to it.
Posted by: tjc | Apr 15, 2008 10:11:20 AM
Obviously they never heard the advice that rubbing it only makes it bigger.
Posted by: Rad | Apr 15, 2008 10:18:39 AM
Banksy?
Posted by: anon | Apr 15, 2008 3:03:44 PM
It's not even a great rendition of a penis. It's Idaho; why don't they just say it's a gun?
Posted by: Paul R | Apr 15, 2008 8:16:34 PM
Clearly executed by one of Larry Craig's constituents.
Posted by: Wheezy | Apr 15, 2008 10:34:32 PM
I did the same thing to a childhood bully who wrote "fag" on my face in everyone of my classmates' yearbooks when I was in 8th grade. I wrote "fag" in lawn fertilizer on his big old white trash front yard which practically overlooked the entire city. First the grass died (burned) then grew back brilliantly green every year until his frustrated homophobic father had the whole thing re-sodded. I laughed for years!
Posted by: Mike W | Apr 16, 2008 4:01:57 PM