To any first-time homeowners out there, take my advice - if you don't water your lawn, it will die. Seems obvious, I know, but how I wish I would have heeded that advice from my father last year. Don't get me wrong - I'm not that dumb. I knew (and could see firsthand) that without water the grass would not be green. I just figured that the grass would be brown for the time being, but when I decided to water it (or more likely, when it actually rained), I assumed it would green up again. Grass, I thought, was like trees - hearty and resilient - not something you needed to actively garden.
Well as I'm sure you already surmised, my logic was woefully flawed. The lawn dried to a crisp in the blistering heat that blanketed the nation in the summer of 2012 and died right there on the spot. Whereas last year was one of the driest summers on record, this spring has been one of the wettest in recent years. Just my luck! I thought. The rain will wash away my mistakes and my once-brown grass will come bursting back to life! Wrong. As the days passed this April and the rain continued to fall, my lawn still looked like this:
Well as I'm sure you already surmised, my logic was woefully flawed. The lawn dried to a crisp in the blistering heat that blanketed the nation in the summer of 2012 and died right there on the spot. Whereas last year was one of the driest summers on record, this spring has been one of the wettest in recent years. Just my luck! I thought. The rain will wash away my mistakes and my once-brown grass will come bursting back to life! Wrong. As the days passed this April and the rain continued to fall, my lawn still looked like this:
Whoops.
So begins year two of home ownership. David is currently in the throes of studying for the hardest exam he (or most people, in my opinion) will ever have to take, so I've been left to conquer the lawn myself. As I have historically had a very brown thumb, I've set my sights low - this year, my goal is not to have the worst lawn in the neighborhood. Second worst is fine, I'm just sick of being "that" house. As such, I called up my resident expert (my dad) and got the lowdown on how to foster a well manicured lawn. For the record, his lawn is gorgeous and I have no disillusions that mine will look anything like that anytime soon. Baby steps.
Last weekend I fertilized (in the snow - damn you Michigan "spring"), and this weekend I seeded. The above picture is of the back of our house, and as you can see I should have done A LOT of seeding. Since this is my first time attempting this however, I was disinclined to rip up the entire yard. Focusing on getting the most bang for my buck, I chose a particularly nasty section of the front yard and got to work. After an hour or two, I had this to show for my efforts:
Fingers crossed that it actually takes hold, otherwise we're going to have an even more unsightly yard than we started with!
Still to come - redoing the mess that is currently the bed in the front of porch. Until then!
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