Wednesday, July 05, 2006

"I'll be perfectly honest with you, Mike. I didn't think you could do it."

My wife said this to me the other day. Was she referring to:

A) Sex
B) Reviving our lawn
C) Staying married for 10 years
D) Replacing a lightbulb

All good answers, no? My proficiency in any of those endeavors is suspect. I'll let you contemplate the answer as you scroll down

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The correct answer is B!

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Oh. Another post about his lawn. Joy." Screw you and your sarcasm.

Lawn Blogging is the next big thing on the Internet and I'm on the cutting edge. No pun intended!

Lawn Blogging has all the thrills of watching grass grow, but none of the pesky annoyances of actually being outside. This is technology in its purest form, bringing together people and my lawn. It's what the Internet is all about.

So, as you may recall, my lawn looked like this about a month ago:


So very dead.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I hate my lawn. I hate having a backyard. I hate the fact that if I don't take care of it, it's a visual blight for my very nice neighbors. Gardening is one among many household maintenance chores that make me resent ever buying a home. If it weren't for the financial necessity of owning a house, I'd rent again in a heartbeat. I'm missing the gene that makes me proud of owning land, that precious component of the American Dream. That gene, along with the ambition gene, and the aren't-babies-cute gene are just plain missing from my chromosomes. I'm borderline sub-human.

But, I do have shame. I have a lot of shame. It bubbled up my esophagus each time I looked at that so very dead lawn. All the Zantac in the world couldn't fix this.

I had two choices. One was to try and revive the lawn. The other was to just pour an assload of concrete over it. I was all ready for the concrete option, but bags of concrete are really heavy. Have I mentioned that I have little computer programmer arms? They're not really concrete-bag sized. They're more grass-seed bag sized. So, I got a bag of grass seeds.

I spent hours raking up the dead weeds, breaking up the dirt, and pressing the seeds into the soil. I fondled the seeds and massaged the soil. And, yes, it was the type of massage with a happy ending.

After weeks of daily watering (which is really a pain in the ass when the sprinklers haven't worked in years), my lawn now looks like this:


Hooooo hoo! Look at that baby! All green and crap! I know that there are still dead patches, and even a few weeds are trying to bust through, but it's MOSTLY alive! Like Frankenlawn!

Don't worry, I'm still working on it. There's more Lawn Blogging yet to come, my friends.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

What pretty lawn you have. Congratulations!

Mike said...

Oh, gosh, I hadn't even noticed. Nice of you to mention.

Anonymous said...

There's nothing so exciting as watching grass grow.

Somewhere in the universe two similes just annihilated each other.

--Pablo

Mike said...

Pablo, you made my head explode!

Willie Baronet said...

I admit, I guessed A. :-)

Mike said...

Rrramone, I appreciate your honesty. I'll strive to be a better lover.

Linda@VS said...

Your new grass is rapidly approaching beautiful, but that little patch of yellow flowers perilously close to your baby grass...is that (dare I ask?) Oxalis???

Mike said...

VS, yes, you may ask, but NO, it is not the dreaded evil Oxalis. It's just a little plant with purty yellow flowers.

Zelda said...

You should think seriously about making most of the yard a stone patio/rock garden. That would be hot. And cheap.

TheTart said...

OK, I know you told me ... but are you in a tree when you take these pics?

Congrats on the grass. If you have a green thumb in the garden then no telling what goes on behind closed doors! *wink*

Smooch,
The Tart
; )

Mike said...

Zelda! I like the stone garden idea a lot. Too bad those damn things are heavy.

Tart, are you saying I'm all thumbs in the bedroom? And I'm taking that picture from our deck. No trees were harmed in the writing of this blog post (except those that were killed to make the deck).