At some point this summer many of us, who are lucky enough to back yards, have probably taken out the lawn mower and spent a sweltering afternoon cutting the grass.
But have you ever thought about what that simple act tells us about our relationship to nature?
In a time of eco-consciousness and climate change concerns, our environmental battles are often not the big corporate deforestations but rather the small things we do on our properties.
Nick Holm is a Cultural Studies expert at Massey University who has been researching these connections.