Green with Envy
There is a conceit among males, when asked about their lawns, to say “It doesn’t need to be Augusta National (or if they are British, Lord’s Cricket Ground or Wembley), I just want it to look nice.” This is a lie. A defensive posture to hide the fact that they do indeed want their greensward to resemble perfection, but that they know they will fail in the attempt. You’ve probably seen these men: cutting their grass every 4.7 days, shooing children off their property, following dogs with watering cans, and flipping through clipboards looking skywards.
These men are generally miserable, always own sheds, and quite possibly have pocket protectors in their wardrobes. Given any opportunity they’ll stop you and treat you to a soliloquy on grubs, drought, and dandelions. And I’m about to join their ranks.
We’ve never really leaned into the pristine lawn thing. Our first semi-detached had no lawn, our second house in the ’burbs coincided with kids and busy work schedules and I was lucky to drag a mower over it every couple of weeks. Then came years in England where copious amounts of rain and a finely-tuned Hayter made for spongy perfection. Back to the US and we had a large lawn where up to three dogs ran amok and fouled the space rendering it not just yellow but disgusting. Center City Philadelphia and now Willow Greens Farm. But why, among a to-do list in the thousands, am I even considering participating in such a tragicomic undertaking?
I suppose it is a control thing, a desire for an Elysian Field. “The world may be out of control, but on these 2400 square feet, there will be order and perfection.” Of course I started with the “green enough to look like a lawn, short enough not to hide snakes” mentality, and I hold to that for about 95% of the grassy areas. But for this space (and the Beech Walk) it’s starting to move toward an obsession—or a drama in several acts.
Act I leaves us in a bad place. Hastily seeded last Autumn, after a surprise grading and leveling attack by my tree guy, the “if we throw enough grass seed on it, it will crowd out the weeds” approach led us to a dramatic turning point. But some new characters have entered the scene.
Dramatis Personae:
The Battery-Powered Mower
As part of my move away from petrol-driven tools, I’ve moved to this lithium powered workhorse. It’s quiet, clean and cuts about 1/4 acre on one battery charge. Aside from looking after the blade, it is virtually maintenance-free.
The Scarifier
This electric model is the smaller brother to Joe Tiller, our electric rototiller. It cuts tiny slots in the ground that accept new grass seed. Corded tools are a bit of a pain, but if they replace anything with a two-cycle engine (which does more harm to the planet than a tractor trailer) then I’m all in.
The Seeder
This tool sucks. It falls over all the time, spreading seeds or fertilizer in massive piles that destroy the lawn. He only has a part in this play as I’m too busy to recast the role.
The Compost Spreader
I splashed out on this rolling drum because it looked fun. Fill it full of compost and it spreads it evenly across the lawn while retaining the big chunks for inclusion back in the compost heap.
Standing in the wings is this Northern bloke whose video (I’m paraphrasing), “Have a Perfect Lawn by Coronation Day” has given me real hope. For the record, I’m not sitting around “Great Pumpkin” style hoping for a royal visit, I just think one should set their sights as high as they can.
Scalping the lawn with the mower, turned up to eleven, has taken a real bite out of the weeds, and revealed the true shortcomings of the lawn.
The scarifier digs up mounds of annual weeds and creates satisfying grooves in the highly compacted soil.
For the first time in my life I’ve actually read the instructions on the back of the bag and have perfectly calibrated the scientifically correct amount of seed per square foot.
The compost spreader is fun to use, although I find I’m using much more Soylent Green than I had anticipated. But after about eight hours of work, we’re making headway. Act II ends on a cliffhanger.
Meanwhile, in the smaller experimental theatre (i.e., the last 1/3 of the croquet lawn) a more edgy approach is being taken. Realizing that this space has plenty of grass but also a healthy dose of weeds, we’re going in a more post-modern direction. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from ads on YouTube, it’s that the only truly happy people in this world are those who put chemicals on their lawns. So I’m giving a “Weed and Feed” product a try. Promising to achieve in one act what a more traditional approach may do in three, it’s simultaneously both more and less invasive than the mechanical alternative.
Of course, this is a play without an ending. Will the protagonist get his perfect lawn? Will the forces of evil (weeds) reclaim the space in Act III? Will the audience be forced to stare at the existential abyss of a dry, bare patch of earth? Who knows, but it is rather meditative. Maybe it’s because you don’t have to make any choices. No problems with clashing colors or different pH requirements. Just green. Just order.
I like the idea of clover instead of lawn - food for the bees, no weed/feed (pesticides? herbicides? surprised.)
Do toads like weed and feed?