We Have the Worst Lawn in Our Neighborhood

Pictured: our old homeowners when they see what we've done to the yard

I haven't done any scientific polling on the matter, but I feel I can confidently say that we have the worst lawn in our neighborhood. When we bought our house, we were handed a lawn in decent shape. The old owners definitely took pride in their lawn. Healthy grass, great plants and flowers. Pretty sure they had landscapers to help, but whatever it was, they did a nice job. Over the years we've proceeded to make it worse and worse, to the point where the front yard now basically looks like a cross between hay and sand. It's even more embarrassing because we actually have a full irrigation system. We don't use it, but still, people know it's there. I sometimes wonder if our old homeowners drive by our yard now and shake their heads in disappointment.

We definitely tried in the past to have a nice lawn. We've had landscapers come out to give us advice and help. We've had the grass seeded and reseeded. We basically even had a new lawn installed in our backyard at one point. All for nought. My wife likes to blame the soil. "We don't have good soil," she'll tell me. No idea where she got this info, but I nod along. "Right, I know, the soil is terrible, it's such a shame. That's definitely the reason the lawn looks awful." All the while knowing full well there's probably something I could be doing. Like fertilizing. Or raking. Or anything at all, really.

Neighbors when they try to think of something nice to say about our lawn.

This year is going to be different. I've vowed to get our lawn into decent shape. I'm tired of the walk of shame when I go to get the mail. Or the pitying glances from passersby when I'm out in the yard. Sometimes people will stop to talk if they see me out in the yard. I'll make some lame joke about how I'm trying to get the lawn in shape. They'll glance at it and struggle to come up with anything nice to say before settling on something along the lines of, "Oh yeah...looks great?" before hurriedly walking away. "I know you're lying!" I want to yell after them.

This spring I've already done some dethatching and fertilizing. I even put down lime, though I'm not sure why exactly. One of our neighbors saw me working in the yard and casually mentioned you can never have too much lime around here. "Oh I know it. So true." I said, pretending to know what we were talking about. I immediately ran out to buy a bag of lime and spread it all over our front yard. Sure hope that guy knew what he was talking about.

For some unknown reason, I even decided to manually aerate our front lawn. A middle-aged man who has spent the bulk of his adult life avoiding physical labor deciding to now jump around on what is essentially a pogo stick for hours at a time? No way can this go badly. I instantly regretted my decision but somehow powered through and got the entire front yard done. I've been ok so far but fully expect to be hobbling around like Bill Walton any day now. I didn't tell my wife what I was up to, so she was confused when our son told her, "Dad is jumping in the front yard." Surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) she'd didn't feel the need to come out and check what was going on.

Anyway, I'm sure the yard will still look terrible, but at least I'm trying. It's my new approach to life - actually doing things, instead of overthinking about doing

things. I still overthink everything but at least am taking some action. That's how I started this Blog, and how I ended up manually aerating the lawn. Sure, a lot of my decisions will be terrible, but at least I'm trying. It's going to be like my Summer of George. With more cheese. And hopefully less hospital visits.