My grass, I have to admit, is spoiled. As in a brat.
I love my grass, don’t get me wrong, but it just won’t ever be a lawn, that’s all. Grass in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere grows more lawn-like than my grass. I’ve watched commercials on TV where they get grass to grow perfectly on a concrete floor. You could play golf on it. Not my grass.
My grass is its own person and, in the end, I’m OK with that. I’m not driving myself crazy over grass.
Though every spring for two weeks I forget that I’m OK with that.
I buy my grass, fertilizer, lime, grass seed — medium shade, low sun, full sun, hell or high water seed. I aerate it, dethatch it. I could buy it diamonds and pearls. It laughs at me, invites its friends over ... moss, goat weed, crabgrass, pretty but wild forget-me-nots. Tells me where to go and has a party. The neighbours shake their heads. Shrug. I tell everyone ... We did our best. We tried to raise it right. It’s just ...
There are gouges here and there in my grass, like wounds in a surly old tomcat. Every year, I revisit those gouges and fill them with ultra-duty professional topsoil, fertilizer and seed.
Nothing.
Except for one gouge on a little hill. From that particular gouge shoots tall, slender pale-green grass, like beach grass. Which is beautiful on a beach. But on my “lawn” it shoots out of that gouge with the flourish and tenacity of nose hair.
Last month I wrote that for basically all of your troubles you should go to YouTube. YouTube knows. It just knows. I fixed my stove. Then I fixed my well-pump pressure gauge and adjusted the air pressure in the bladder in the water tank. I got my un-inflatable wheelbarrow tire inflated with ropes and sticks! I’m walking around like Tarzan. There’s nothing I think I can’t do. I could probably take out my own appendix if I had a good set of laparoscopic jumper cables and a monitor. But my appendix is good so far. So, why not go to YT to find out how to solve my “lawn” troubles?
I did.
OK. Apparently, the PH could be all wrong in my grass. All these years, and it might just be something simple like the PH levels. And if it’s not my PH levels, then I need some of THIS STUFF. So I’m getting ready to look for where to buy some of THIS STUFF when the guy says also my soil temperature should be 57 degrees. If you put THAT STUFF on your lawn and it’s 58 degrees you might as well throw your money out the window.
57 degrees.
Is that Canadian or American? Celsius or Imperial?
You know, some people just dig the whole yard up and fill it in with rocks. Call it stonescaping. Big stones, little stones. River stones, rainbow stones, speckled stones, flagstone, brick ... I like the concept, but I’d never be able to pull that off. I’m too conventional. I’d never sleep at night. My sense of feng shui would be spiking like a seismograph mid-earthquake. My psychological gimbals would be all off. I’d be lying in bed wide-eyed at 4 a.m., unable to turn my brain off.
Plus, my grass would grow through it. Like grass does, through pavement, concrete ... titanium. Soon, I’d be out there with a weed whacker I guess. Flossing.
I’d like to put one of those huge Volkswagen-sized boulders on my “lawn.” There’s something zen-like in those boulders. They make you feel so grounded. Peaceful.
Plunk it right down on the nose hair.
But soon enough, you know what would happen.
Grass finds a way. Especially brat grass.
I just have to accept it.
Mike Finigan, from Glace Bay, is a freelance writer now living in Sydney River.
