WordSisters

Category: lawn care

  • Lazy, Crazy, Days of Summer

    So, this is summer. We all began daydreaming about this time of year during the February/March doldrums. Longer days, more time to bike, read in a comfy outdoor chair, walks with friends or family, cookouts, maybe swim, possibly attend a local festival or even a trip to the state fair or a getaway.  Don’t think about bugs, grass cutting, watering the gardens, traffic, crowds, bored kids, very hot days, house maintenance at your place or a relative’s, ants in the kitchen, work that doesn’t diminish or go away, higher food costs or utility bills. Just roll out the lazy days. Really?

    For each of us with plans for a long weekend, there is a scheduler or boss with post it notes from a few of our peers for the same time off and calendars needing additional worker hours. Caregivers are scrambling to fit in dentist appointments, physicals, and eye tests and all required before the last week of August. And don’t forget finding drivers’ ed if there is an appropriate age kid in the house.

    What is it about our easy-going collective summer fantasy? Planted in our rhythms by school calendars built around agricultural and/or weather limitations centuries ago. Perpetuated by advertisers and businesses. Lots of people work their longest hours in warm weather. For them summer means more bucks to stretch through slow times. Or those extra summer jobs pay for the extra summer expenses. 

    What we share in our summer dreams across many parts of the United States are the simple pleasures of walking outside without a coat or gloves, not slipping on ice, seeing neighbors or friends while casually walking, sitting on a public bench sipping a cup of coffee or slushy. There are flowers to admire, fresh vegetables and fruit available that taste better, sunlight more hours instead of porch and garage lights. After staying inside during sunlight-starved months of cold, this is worth the wait. Wasps, bees, flies, mosquitos and ticks: please give us a break.

  • Lawn Care Craziness (Or in Spring, Anything Seems Possible)

    I have never cared deeply about having a perfect velvety green lawn. Or rooting out dandelions, creeping charlie, and crabgrass. And yet, lately I’ve been trying to rehabilitate my lawn.

    My neighbors care even less than I do, so creeping charlie crept over from one neighbor and dandelions blew in from the other neighbor. Crabgrass sensed an opportunity and launched its own attack. After only one inattentive year, our yard became The Bad Example. Clearly, its sorry state doesn’t bother my neighbors, but it does bother me.

    I’ve invested a lot of time creating and cultivating flower gardens, so having a ratty weed-choked lawn seems incongruous.

    Creeping charlie is the worst. I can live with it around the perimeter. But I thought it would be nice to have some actual grass in the main part of the lawn. Being organically minded, I didn’t want to nuke the yard with chemicals that would kill the weeds but poison the butterflies, bees, and birds I’m trying attract.

    I read up. Several websites suggested covering the offending patch with cardboard and plastic in the fall. The heat and lack of light would kill the weeds and then I could rake them off in the spring. We tried it and all that did was kill the grass. The creeping charlie was alive and well. Sigh.

    So then I began digging it up. A s l o o o w w w process. Until The Perfect Husband got involved. Boom. Done. Except for the oh-so-tedious process of knocking the soil off the dead weeds so the city would agree to take them as yard waste.

    We reseeded. Lush grass is due to sprout any day. 

    Meanwhile, all those dandelions I dug up last year are back and showing me who’s boss.

    This focus on lawn care may be a fool’s errand. But hey, it’s spring. Anything’s possible.