Like many of you, I know what I’m doing this Canada Day weekend, and it isn’t guzzling a cold one in a comfy chair on a dock somewhere.
If it isn’t raining (not supposed to), I’ll be mowing. And mowing. And mowing. Thank the good lord Harry I’ve got the right mower to get the job done — my gladiator grass gobbling John Deere Zero Turn Z 345 R, mulch kit installed before it even left the showroom.
A mulch kit traps the grass in with the blades as opposed to throwing it out the side so it gets ground into a fine fertilizer of sorts, blending in with the lawn instead of leaving big clumps everywhere. It has made mowing, especially longer grass, a dream.
What you see it chomping into here is the tsunami of grass engulfing Grandpa Mountain, a hill I had built with a concrete water cistern on its side underneath 40 or so truckloads of dirt (20 some last summer). It even has power run to it. So you can slide down the “mountain” in winter, ride or drive (even a car) over it in summer, and year round have a secret heatable fort to goof around in whenever you like.
I didn’t plant any of the grass you see here. With all the rain so far this summer, and a few sunny growing days in between, this grass just exploded out of the soil I had hauled in last fall, and is spreading as fast as it is growing. I have two acres here, so I’ve been doing the best I can to keep up with the lawn grass when it’s dry enough, and left Grandpa Mountain to do its thing because even when it was sunny the fresh soil under that grass was too muddy to drive on anyway.
I wish the first grass I seeded Grandpa Mountain with had exploded like this, but no.
The first version of the “mountain” was considerably smaller than this, but nicely landscaped and covered with a couple of loads of mixed soil, perfect for growing grass. A landscaping friend of mine suggested I buy a certain type of seed used for high wear areas, ditches, very hardy, and pretty expensive.
This was a few short years ago when you couldn’t buy a raindrop, we had no running water here yet, and I didn’t have the equipment to haul water in to keep the new soil and seed moist. It was also a very windy time, and within a couple of weeks, both the soil and seed I’d purchased…had blown completely away. Just, gone.
Now isn’t that special.
Not this time. I just have to get it under control. I will. Besides, this mower is a lot of fun to drive. Gitty-up!
Now before I leave you to go do your own yard work today, deet’ed to the hilt, I’d like to pass along news of an amazing discovery I made a couple of summers ago.
I love having lots of trees and bushes in the yard, but planting and watering and nurturing them can be a thankless task, when for whatever reason, they just refuse to survive and thrive. So one day while mowing I noticed a few leafy sprouts protruding from the lawn, reaching for the sun with all their might, and I thought, “Hey, those are trees or bushes of some sort, why don’t I just mow around them and let them grow!”
Sometimes I truly can be brilliant.
So now I have a very nice clump of trees or bushes or both growing beautifully right where I want them, and now all I have to do is pluck the grass from around them and watch them grow. And it only took me 36 years to think of it! Happy Holiday Weekend kids. You’ve earned it.
Comments and column ideas welcome at lmustard1948@gmail.com
