April is a critical time in the competitive sport of growing a perfect lawn.
As the grass comes out of dormancy at different rates, it's easy to see who's ahead of the pack and who's lagging behind. You find out who's injured this season and starting at a disadvantage because of grubs (hint: look for huge areas of lawn that stay brown as if it's still January).
I've been in a sanctimonious mood because my mostly-organic lawn is one of the early bloomers this year.
When a truck from a landscape company rolled down my street the other day, I craned my neck to see where it was going, and more importantly, where to direct my scorn.
See, if you're sad enough to consider this a competition as I do, April is the best time to spy on your neighbors to see if you can figure out any secrets from their playbooks.
A shrewd observer notices the contractor walking the periphery of a lawn with a homeowner and conjectures that he's installing irrigation this year. She hears the sound of a lawn mower and, knowing nobody has enough grass yet to mow, quickly locates the house where somebody is dethatching with a machine. She sees the neighbor who is raking the lawn with a leaf rake, just as he does every year, and makes a mental note.
And of course, she has her own playbook.
This year my new attack involves clover (shhh, don't tell the neighbors). I bought grass seed with a tiny percentage of clover mixed in last summer and planted it in a few small patches in the fall.
Clover is widely considered a weed in this era of chemical lawn treatments, but there was a time when clover was a staple of a healthy lawn. I used to consider it a weed, too, until I finally admitted to myself that it was the only good-looking part of my lawn for most of the summer. It's dark green, drought-resistant and soft.
My new grass survived the winter and is filling in nicely. Tiny little clover leaves have sprouted among the regular grass, and it isn't freaking me out. If I can make it through the spring without panic and remorse, maybe I will deploy the rest of the bag of seed in the fall.
And maybe it won't be so badly received by my neighbors. As I get to know more of them, I'm forced to admit that there's more to a person than what you learn by watching them through a window.
That's an important lesson for anybody, particularly anybody who happened to be looking out her window the other day when that chemical lawn truck rolled down my street.
I watched with enthusiasm as the truck slowed down, right near my house. Then my scorn turned to horror as that symbol of the chemical lawn industry pulled into my driveway.
Before I could formulate a thought, the driver backed out and headed the opposite direction down my street and out of view.
I turned around and vowed that, at least for the rest of the afternoon, I would try to get a real hobby.
nnn
Julie Kirkwood is a freelance writer for The Eagle-Tribune. Her column, Yard Dirt, appears most weeks in At Home, Sunday North. She also keeps a gardening blog, Yard Dirt: Sharing Seeds, at www.eagletribune.com.
