Now you tell me

Our gardener dude Duane (first mentioned here) came by to do a little work. I think I should mention now that (we just learned) he is a bit of a legend in the northwest plant community. We're somewhat lucky to have found him because we met him at a party and he works with a friend and we happen to live in the same zip code, etc. He's talented and we're thrilled. Anyway, it has been a while so I was happy to work on the lawn with him. I had a lot of pent up frustration from the tiling episode and I needed to do something physical that in no way was limited to staying inside the lines.

About six weeks ago, Duane came by and killed a third of our front yard. Yes, on purpose. He sort of cleansed the palate. Apparently he follows the starting from scratch methodology of urban jungle creation. Our front lawn has been one-third dead and dry and two thirds green yet dying with extensive clover. We've been answering the neighbors' questions of what our plans were for the dead dry strip with pithy responses such as: "oh, we just like that color better" or "we're going to pave it" or "it's a landing strip." A few replies like that and your neighbors will stop asking you what you're doing. I guarantee it.

On yesterday, Duane came by to roto-till the landing strip. I offered to help. My frustration over the tiling debacle made the prospect of swinging a pick very enticing. I picked all the sod and ripped it up and Duane ran the tiller and—voila!—in about four hours, the dead dry strips of grass became overturned strips of dirt with dead grass sprinkled throughout. And this is an improvement.

While we were taking a break, I mentioned to Duane that I was thinking of painting a runway or parking stripes or something on the dead grass just to tease the neighbors. He said there is paint meant for use on vegetation. It's used to mark out pathways or bed locations or somesuch and will degrade over time without harming the plants. In fact—get this—another client has been painting some ground cover green because it died almost immediately after he planted it. He went on to say, "yeah, but now even the paint doesn't look that good. (pause) I'm not a very good gardener."

Well, that's bullhockey and was very humorous because it is so exceedingly self-effacing.

I'm going to go rub some ben-gay on my sore pick-swinging muscles and look out over my strips of dirt on the front forty.