245. My Lawn

This one might sound weird, but if you think about it you’ll know it’s probably true of a lot of people: I love mowing and tending the grass of my lawn. I have never planted an entire lawn, but lately I’ve been working on the area of my lawn that was disrupted by the building of my garage. Naturally, the first thing to grow was weeds. I got some wheat straw and planted grass seed in the fall and then covered it in straw. The shaded part of the lawn had great grass. In the sunny part I got some great broad-leafed grass that ended up being wheat. So in that spot I had a great wheat crop that returned largely to weeds with a few spots of grass. I had heard from a friend that when you get a snowfall in late fall or early winter you should broadcast grass seed over the snow so that you know you have your area covered. In addition to that the seed will gradually get to the ground and germinate in the spring. So I tried that and it seemed to work fairly well, but I still have a lot of weeds mixed in. Now I’m working on that section with weed and feed and some weed spray. I prefer not to use a bunch of toxins on the grass, but I will do what I can to get good grass.

Another thing about the lawn is mowing it. I really enjoy that. In spring and early summer, it can be exacerbating because if I go anywhere I can’t keep up with it because it’s ready to mow every four or five days. The rain also interferes with keeping up because we can get spring and early summer rains for days on end. Sometimes I feel like I have to run out and mow at every break in the clouds.

And now it’s the season of watering. It’s really what I remember about summer at home: running through the sprinklers. While I don’t do that much these days, I do have my moments in the heat when I just take a step or two through the sprinkler and then laze around in a lawn chair letting the evaporation cool me. What can I say? I love taking care of my lawn.