My Yard Hates Me

It's September again. It's time to get out there and fertilize the old grass, plant new grass, and work on the yard. When I bought my house four years ago, it had a pretty nice yard; but I soon fixed that. You see, I can’t just fertilize in the fall like most people. No, Hamby has to go all the way.

“Hand me that home-improvement/gardening/cooking book, Honey.” (Scan, scan, scan) “Okay, now I’m an expert. I’m ready to really fix up this yard. Says here that you can’t grow new grass if there are faster-growing weeds competing, and you can’t use weed-killer if you want to grow grass seed. Seems like to me we need to wipe it all out and start with a clean slate. I’m off to get some Round-Up.”

My wife, the de-facto Voice of Reason (seeing as how she wasn’t actually born a Hamby), tries to talk me out of it. “Uh, Mark, do you really think we need to kill everything? Most of the yard looks pretty good. We just have a couple of small areas where…”

“You’re right, Honey. A job this size needs machinery. This is going to take some real research. I’m going downstairs to have a look on the Internet.” The thing about me is, I am unwavering in my belief that all human knowledge has been compiled and posted on a web page somewhere. You just have to Google long enough, ad you’ll eventually find it.

Have you any idea how many machines you can bring to bear on your yard? According to the home/garden/cookbook I have, you first have to till your yard (You could use a garden tiller, but you really need a tractor with a pull tiller.); then level your yard (Gonna need a front-loader for this. A power rake comes in useful here somewhere; but for the life of me, I can’t figure out where.); then aerate your yard (Maybe that nifty plug aerator is overkill if you’ve already tilled it, but you want your yard to be perfect.); then verticut it (Huh? What’s a verticutter? Oh well, if the book says I gotta have one…); then fertilize it (Can’t beat a broadcast feeder for this job.); and finally lay grass seed (A drop feeder is really the only way to get even distribution). The rental guy really likes me.

Of course, all this takes time. The research alone took 2-3 weeks. And it took at least a week to call all of those rental outfits to find one that rented the verticutter for $38 per day instead of $40. By the time, I sowed my grass seed, I had to work around the costumed kids who kept saying “Trick or treat!” But that’s okay; because the weatherman assured me we were going to have a warm Indian Summer.

Weatherman don’t know crap. I swear to you it was 75 degrees right up until the day after I planted grass. It snowed within the week. Well, maybe not “snow” snow, but there was definitely white, frozen stuff on my lawn. Frost, snow, what’s the difference? It still killed the grass.

So now it’s September again. I've waited all year for this. “I know the yard looks bad,” I told myself, “but I can’t really do anything about it until fall. Come September, I’m going to fix that. I’ll get it right this year, yessiree.” In failed attempt to forestall me, Mona hired Scott’s Lawn Service to “help you since you’re so busy with everything else.” Nice try, Mona.

I can’t plant grass this week, though; I am in the middle of buying a motorcycle. And last week was too hot. Next week, I will be laid up after my eye surgery. October will still be okay, though. It’s supposed to be warm this year, a real Indian Summer. I’ve got time.

Well, got to go now. The rental guy called me about a new power rake he got in this year.