lawn

[forgotten_aria]

I'm a horrible lawn owner.

First, there was some weird miss communication and we didn't reprogram the sprinkler system soon enough, so the lawn went a long time with a lot of water and lots of weeds grew. I tried to mow but it was too mushy plus my mower was broken, shipped with a cracked wheel.

Then I got sick.

I mowed about 1/3 of the lawn a few days ago, once I was better, but since I didn't charge my mower before starting, it ran out of juice. The weeds have already grown mostly back.

Now we're in a heat wave and I'm still not fully recovered from being sick. Mowing in the heat is supposed to be bad for the grass anyway. So I hope to get a full mow tomorrow, but I'm likely driving my neighbors batty. She's already laughed at me mowing twice now.

Comments

[coffeekitty.livejournal.com]

i love the icon.

also, what you describe is why i do not own a house, or want to. people can tell me that renting is throwing money away all they want to. If you don't have a good rental situation, they're probably right. but if i can be in a good rental situation, paying for the privilege of NOT having to maintain the house and property myself is a bargain. i see renting an apartment as paying for a service. if you're not getting the service you're paying for, or the service that you are paying for is not what you really want, then yes, it's money down the drain.

I do want to see your house someday, though. I'm sad that the housewarming happened while i was going crazy trying to start my postdoc.

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

There will be other opportunities for you to see the house.

I could always pay someone else to worry about my lawn. but with me being unemployed, it always seems like a bad idea to pay for things I could be doing.

[mathhobbit.livejournal.com]

Yeah, lawns are junky like that. I wonder if you could get a cover plant like clover to take care of it for you, or if your neighbors would put up with a field of wildflowers. (You can get wildflower seed mixes, and they don't look too bad when applied to the postage stamp lawns here in the city.)

"Goats" always seems like a good answer to me, but that's probably because I've never had to deal with a goat.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

So don't have a lawn! Unless you need something for kids to play on or dogs to poop on it's really more trouble than it's worth (and even with kids and dogs there are other options). Replace it with some nice shrubs or bunchgrasses or wildflowers - something that needs to be trimmed twice a year instead of twice a month. It'll be prettier too.

[alphacygni]

Speaking as someone with a field of wildflowers instead of a lawn, it's actually harder than you think. I sometimes fantasize about how easy it would be to just mow, instead of weeding, deadheading, staking, realizing after a few months that one of the things you thought was a flower was actually a baby tree that is now impossible to pull out, trying to keep one clear path down the middle of it all...

(I would have chosen shrubs and paths and smaller beds of wildflowers, given the choice, but I happened to buy a house that already had an elaborate field of wildflowers.)

Do you have any sort of neighborhood rules about lawns and what needs to be in them? If you don't, there's all sorts of interesting options.

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

I think I'll go with the lawn for now because maintaining it might actually be less work than researching an alternative. But I should find out what the town things. Sadly you can't always get a straight answer out of town hall.

[bob-wonderllama.livejournal.com]

I really like the look of long grass, which seems to be a problem because many towns around here have some laws about needing to keep lawn trimmed. I just don't see the point.

I'm against bio-engineering for some things, but I think it would beneficial to make a species of grass that grows to optimal height and then just stops. Doesn't seem like it would be that hard.

[binkbink.livejournal.com]

Some time back there actually was a grass like that, and my father tried it out. Alas, it grew so slowly after it got to lawn height, that it was not able to recover from damage caused by use.