Autonomous Source: It's a jungle out there

Autonomous Source

July 20, 2004

It's a jungle out there

Below are the results of a painstaking 15-minute survey of the condition of my lawn. I knew things were bad, but I never knew they were this bad. Something will obviously have to be done. Mouse-over the photos for more information about each particular problem. Note that I know absolutely nothing about lawns (as if the photos don't already make that perfectly clear) so the names of some of the plants are not accurate...

(To speed loading times for the home page, the photos have been moved to the archive. But take a look! Pictures of my lawn! Wow! Rarely seen before!)

This appears to be regular grass but it isn't. The leaves are wider and many sprout from a common root.

This is a pretty typical look at my lawn. You've got some token 'grass', some moss, some bare patches, and some kind of weed, in this case that funny flat-leafed stuff.

I got ants. Lots and lots of ants...

I've never been sure what crab grass is, but someone once told me that it looks like this.

More ants, more weeds, more bare spots and even a little bit of grass. Is this interesting to anyone? What would move me to take photos of my lawn and put them on the internet? Am I losing my marbles? Note that I didn't say 'loosing my marbles', as that would have indicated a crack-up for sure, but still I'm concerned. I really need to get out more.

Clover can grow pretty large. Betcha didn't know that. That's because no one but me is lazy enough to let it run rampant.

Here's some of that funny flat-leafed weed. It's a pretty successful lawn weed due to the heavy leaves that push the flimsier weeds and grass out of the way to hog all the sunlight for itself. Sort of like Microsoft.

A small bright spot of fragile beauty in a field of corruption. It probably symbolizes something, but I can't imagine what...

Many years ago when I was pulling down the tall dollars to surf the net in a air-conditioned, Herman Miller furnished office, I paid someone to plow my driveway. As an added bonus, he would plow my lawn and rip up my sod. Maybe it's about time I did something to repair it.

Oh look! How pastoral!

These stones are all that remains of a sacrificial altar used by the indigineous Americans in elaborate rituals to make their warriors invincible in battle. Either that or it's part of some unfinished project by the previous inhabitants of this house. Either way, I've applied to make my yard a UNESCO world heritage site.

We had a yard contractor do some work for us last year and he did a real professional job. But when he replaced some of the sod he damaged, he used grass of a different colour from what was there before, resulting in this line. He also used grass.

Look! There's actually a spot on my lawn that has a nice bit of grass. No weeds, no dead spots! The problem is that the rest of the yard needs such infrequent mowing, this nice spot (and it is unique) gets overgrown quickly.

This is a strange purple plant that is slowly taking over the whole yard. All you still reading this? Don't you have anything better to do? We've established that I don't, but you -- you have your whole life in front of you! Don't spend it reading reading these pointless, self-indulgent works of nonsense. When you're 82, thinking back on your life, do you want to have this as a memory?

More of that purple plant, with some sumac that I'm desperately trying to get rid of poking through.

This is where my septic tank is buried. Every couple of years I have to dig it open so the guy with the worst job in the world can stick a hose in and suck it out. This year the guy complained that the cover was too deep and that I would have to help him get it open. We ran a chain through the handle and each yanked on one end. *Ploonk!* An flukey splash made it out of the hole and drew a line of sludge all the way up my body. Yes, right up to my face.

Since this spring, strange brightly-coloured objects like this have been found all over the lawn.

These are wild strawberry plants. Why they have such strange discolouration, I don't know. Toxic waste, I guess.

We have a very nice pine tree towering above the yard. It doesn't help the lawn.

Looks like grass right? It's not, it's this strange weed that has taken over a large section of lawn. It's very fragile and grows like a bush.

Mama left a tarp full of soil over a spot of lawn for a very long time and killed everything under it. We planted grass seed mixed with some clover on fresh soil and -- voila! Looks pretty good, eh? Doing the rest of the 1/4 acre of lawn could take a while.

Still here? God, you're pathetic. You're worse than me. I mean, I have an excuse. I'm not well. I've been deprived of contact with civilized society for a long time now. I'm expected to be all obsessive and introverted. But you, you're out there in the big wide world, doing things and going places. Or at least you would be if you weren't reading stoopid blog posts about different kinds of weeds. Really, it may be a cliché, but, 'Get a life.'

Posted by Bruce Gottfred at July 20, 2004 03:41 PM | TrackBack

Comments

What? No comments on this post? Does that mean ... no one's interested in my lawn?

Posted by: Bruce Gottfred at July 24, 2004 07:28 AM

Post a comment