Hard Yard


The sounds of spring are in the air. Little birds tweeting, the ice cream truck chortling, the neighborhood yard man revving up his lawn mower… what is he mowing?! The yards are all exactly as he left them. Yellow, straw like and shorter then a new recruits new hair cut. I saw him out there, looking at my yard all hopeful like and I looked at him all “I have my own Lawn Mower!” like . It was a beautiful moment.

Dogger and I didn’t get a whole lot of Dog School homework done this weekend. I translate “Not a whole lot” as “any” and “didn’t” as “Not Even Gave It A Second Thought”. We didn’t have time in the agenda for full on, hard core training anyway– I needed to sleep until 10 am and Dogger needed to wind herself around the tree repeatedly. We have Dog School Tuesday and that hard core training is what I pay the dog whisperer for anyway.

Dogger had a full schedule of laying in the sun and barking at drug buyers while I made my initial survey of the back yard. Dogger is still banned from the back yard because of her ongoing involvement in the Faucet Liberation front or whatever they are calling themselves now. They change it every week. Amateurs. They got all disheartened when they couldn’t get the domain name they wanted, www.faucetteliberationnow.com and then got all excited by www.freethefaucets.com but at the last minute a Farah Faucet fan bought up all the www.faucet addys and that just made the FL front or whatever they are calling themselves this week very, very sad.

I decided I am not going get my Ms. Greenjeans thing on this year. I’m not going to try to plant anything. I’m not going to kill any innocent tomato plants or get my heart broken by under performing carrots or hateful potatoes. This year is the Year Of The Yard. I will not be mocked by the wetlands this year. I am rededicated to turning the back yard into a green space and if doing that causes the folks that I was paying to be a wetlands centric Indian tribe to move out of the shed, well, then I can live with that too and for a parting gift they can take the plastic duckies and rubber turtles I salted the yard with them too.

I went and bought grass seed at an actual yard center instead of at Poverty Barn and this year, I’m bringing in the big guns – actual store bought fertilizer. I’m not going to cheap out and pin my hopes on lame, “All Natural” home made Dogger produced fertilizer this year either. “All Natural” is just code for “actually kind of shitty”

I got guaranteed all synthetic stuff. If it works I’m going to go buy something nasty to poison all the little bugs and spiders and other nasty biting critters out there too. The yard is going to be green, lush and a superfund site by the time I’m done with it.

The yard I want is green. I don’t really care if its green from actual grass or green from weeds. It’s all good and if I mow it regularly it all looks like grass. It’s the theory I have used in the front yard and I think it should work in the back yard too. I noticed yesterday that they Drug Dealers yard is looking better then mine. It’s all green and lush looking. My yard is still yellow and crunchy. The only green space on the whole yard is the narrow spit of grass that Dogger uses for her morning toilette .

Thanks to the grass seed and its “natural” green coloring, I have an actual green thumb right now. I may have it framed. I have this green thumb because yesterday I went out and seeded the yard because the TV said it was going to rain. Light Rain, light, life giving, seed nourishing rain. It poured, heavy, death bringing, seed washing away rain. If at first you don’t succeed, seed, seed again.