Entropy and Lawn Care

We were very enthused about our grass when we put it in a few years back. It’s called a “no-mow” lawn. It’s advertised as needing no chemical fertilizers, mowing once a year at most, and little watering. (For the botanically minded among you, it’s a fescue mix.)

We were thrilled about having a lawn we didn’t have to mow, even if it wasn’t quite up to suburban standards. It was patchy, frequently brownish, and scraggly in places. That was fine with us, considering. It needed a lot of watering, but summer is dry around here and we could accept that. We were inspired because one patch near our house it was gorgeous, thick, blue, long, and luxurious. Why is it so beautiful just there?

Then, in July 2006 the crab grass escalated. So, in spring 2007 we resorted to chemicals -- a pre-emergent herbicide. We had less crab grass, but more bare patches, which made our lawn very attractive to Cicada Killers, two-inch long ground dwelling hornets who hover a few feet off the ground. We saw them working on a couple of dead Cicadas, which was cool, and they don’t sting, which recommends them more than other hornets. But we had hundreds and hundreds of them hovering a few feet off our lawn for most of July and August. It was just a bit creepy to be in the midst of the hoard.

The options for dealing with Cicada Killer are: 1) pour boiling water down their holes (bad for grass, possibly dangerous for people) 2) apply really nasty poisons (contrary to our whole lawn care philosophy); 3) plant more grass to cover up the bare spots they nest in; 4) adjust your attitude. We’re working on a combination of 3 and 4. This meant weekends in the months of September and October were given over to a lot of mowing, raking, planting, sowing, and watering to lay bare the bare patches, put in the seed, and give it a chance at survival.

Sometimes we think of throwing in the towel. We could go in one of two directions: an industrial sort of bluegrass desert or a tallgrass meadow snake habitat. But then we look at that nice patch by the house. It may be that it’s shaded there, or that there is more runoff. If that’s the case, then, the rest of the lawn is just immutably inferior and we can never replicate perfection on a general basis. But, we still hope. We still have this idea that if we just plant the seed and can get it to thicken by watering it enough, and applying the herbicide, we can enjoy a largely crabgrass and hornet-free lawn.

Life sometimes seems a lot like our lawn, as we’re battered back and forth between our hope for perfection and our experience of entropy.