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Health & Fitness

Terry Flanagan: Man Versus Lawn

You don't always reap what you sow.

It is now several weeks into my seasonal battle with my lawn, and I’m ready to admit defeat. My son informs me that the turf track at Arlington looks better than our lawn and they have horses thundering across it every day. I’ve tried every variety of grass seed known to man. Shade, dense shade, mixed variety, Midwest specialty blends.

I’ve tried the expensive instant grass kit for idiots that practically plants and grows itself, and still no luck. I’ve tried aeration, trimming trees to filter more sunlight through, lawn rolling, and different services, but my lawn still looks like the before picture in those lawn care ads. Meanwhile, my neighbor maintains a lawn that would rival any golf course in the country.

This year, after doing the usual sowing, I delayed mowing the lawn until Dorothy complained that she could no longer see the cat when he was outside. I figured that I would give the little seedlings a chance to grow undisturbed in the wild. Given all of the rain we had, I thought I had a decent chance to fill in some of those bare spots. But after mowing the other day, all I have to show for my efforts are a couple of tiny patches of sickly sprouts that don’t look like they’ll last a month, much less the whole summer.

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I’ll be the first to admit that I lack any aptitude for gardening. But I’m not trying to grow orchids. I’m just trying to cultivate anything that even remotely resembles grass. I’ll even settle for a benign looking crop of weeds at this point. But I can’t even get weeds to grow. I’m beginning to wonder if I could even get a Chia pet to sprout.

I blame it all on my Cub Scout experience, Doctor. We had a pack project to plant something and nurture it. I think we had six to eight weeks to grow something from seed and bring it in for display and judging. We bought some starter kit at the store with some sort of nondescript plant.

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I followed the instructions, carefully watering it daily and keeping it on a window sill where it could get plenty of sun. Within a week sprouts began to appear and by the time it was ready for its public debut, I had a tray filled with healthy little green plants. So far, so good.

We get to the school where the plants would be displayed and it’s incredible. There was a miniature farm that had miniature furrowed fields with tiny plants, a stream, and a tractor. There were ornate plant displays that would have rivaled anything at a floral shop. And then there was my aluminum foil tray of plants from the dime store. Needless to say, I did not take the horticultural world by storm. I was a gardening failure at 7.     

Now you might think that I would have learned better by now. But no. I have one final assault planned this fall, thanks to some advice from , among others. The trick is to seed before the first snows and to let the grass remain dormant (but, Sam, my grass is already dormant) through the winter. The seeds will be nourished by the melting snows in spring and, voila, I will have a verdant lawn that will be the envy of the neighborhood.

The plan sounds good on paper, but I still have my doubts. So I have a Plan B suggested by another neighbor who has been slowly replacing his lawn with a deck and decorative stone. As a bonus, his mowing time has gone way down.

I think he may be on to something. 

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