Planting Lawn Gives Owner Growing Pains
I had been looking forward to moving into our new house for quite awhile, but the idea of putting in my own lawn had an almost mystical appeal. Finally, I would have one of those putting-green lawns I had always coveted, I thought, carefully calculating how much grass seed and fertilizer to get.
Early in the morning, I started out front with a hand cultivator to loosen the soil, figuring on a few hours work. Several hours later, the tines were bent like spaghetti, my hands were blistered, and only a small patch had been worked. A trip to the store for a pickax brightened my spirits.
On the first swing, I knew I was in trouble. The pick bounced back after penetrating a meager two inches. I nervously looked up and down the block, and swore I saw a few curtains move. Going hard at it, I began using full swings, only to have the pick snap off. Several more days of this with a stronger pick had me feeling like a convict breaking rocks, but finally it was time for topsoil and seed.
Now comes the easy part, I remember naively thinking as I hooked up the sprinkler and turned on the hose. After watering the first section, I realized I would have to tiptoe onto the fresh mud to retrieve and move the sprinkler, then tiptoe to the next section and so on. As I did this, the hose dragged ditches in the section I had just watered. Getting to the back yard involved coiling 75 feet of wet, muddy hose around my shoulder and more tiptoeing. A pair of shoes were quickly reduced to muddy blobs that I simply left outside and referred to as the sprinkling shoes. My footprints became little lakes with expensive layers of seed floating in them.
On the second day of watering, I tiptoed around a corner and stepped in a soft spot, sinking to my ankle and performing a spinning half gainer before coming to rest with one hand buried in the mud. The third day I left the sprinkler on through breakfast, and came out to find a river of seed and topsoil running down the curb. I recalculated the cost of sod and a sprinkler system.
Watering the mud began to dominate my life. I set the alarm early to become a human Rain-Bird for an hour, and fastidiously noted areas that dried first. I bought a nozzle with five different spray patterns that allowed me to reach far corners of the yard, hit edges without overspray on the walkways, and even water the raspberries beyond the back wall without leaving the safety of the patio.
The house became surrounded by a moat of mud, traversed only by the sidewalk or driveway. My neighbor allowed me to water from her lawn, and kindly pretended not to see whenever her automatic sprinklers suddenly activated and soaked me.
Finally, microscopic sprouts appeared on the sixth day, and all tiptoeing ceased to protect the fragile seedlings. I developed an evil eye for the neighborhood kids; wandering dogs were shooed away, and the paper carrier was reprimanded for tossing my paper onto the green stubble.
Leaving for a business trip was an anxious event. I carefully explained to my wife what nozzle to use on each area. Somewhere between espousing the virtues of multiple light waterings versus one heavy watering, and allowing that it would be best if she used my sprinkling shoes, I began to feel sheepish. On the way to the airport, I resolved to take the lawn less seriously.
Lawn fixation appears to be just another symptom of aging. After all, it wasn’t too long ago that “turfing” - driving on someone’s lawn - was a practical joke to my generation. Now that we’re all after the elusive perfect lawn, turfing is grounds for execution, and I woke up this morning with the realization I had become the old grouch down the street.
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