Edging Sidewalks and Walkways

I don't think the lawn has been edged in years.

I'm not kidding here—in some spots, the lawn has encroached six to eight inches onto the walkways, with turf up to two inches thick. It's been a looooong time since anyone tried to tame this mess.
But with my trusty manual edger—only $19 at Lowe's—and an old, stumpy broom, I've been working to make it less jungle-y looking.

Love those clean lines!

But the downside of a corner lot is the endless, what must be miles of sidewalk surrounding the house. Oy! This might take a while.

Cloverfield

A few weeks ago I mentioned that our lawn was a carpet of dandelions, and I was going to do little to eradicate them because I think dandelions are pretty, even if most other people don't. Well, the dandelions have been surpassed by the clover.

Field of clover. Really, who wants an all-grass lawn? The clover feels so cool and lush on my bare feet.
In the middle of the picture is a star magnolia I planted. In the distance, a river birch. Both are from Home Depot; so far, they're doing pretty well.

Because I do love folklore, I had to look up the lore surrounding clover. Everyone knows that a four-leaf clover is lucky, but there's more. One site had this to say: "In the middle ages the clover was considered a charm warn to ward off evil spirits and witches. The four-leaf clover was said to have even more power against evil, a five-leaf clover was said to be warn by witches to give them evil powers, and a two-leaf clover would give a maiden the power to see her future lover."

So, the broad band of clover surrounding The Box House should be a good deterrent against evil witches. I'll be searching for a four-leaf clover while I'm out there working; if I find one, wearing it in my left shoe will allow me to see the fairies.

I was reading in one of my gardening books, or maybe it was in a magazine somewhere, that grass seed mixtures once contained a high percentage of clover seeds because they were a lovely green and were very drought tolerant. Around the 1950s, when broad leaf herbicides became popular, seed companies dropped clover from the mix, as clover was killed off along with dandelions anyway.

So I find it funny that now, more than half a century later, we are supposed to think that single-species lawns, with nary a stray clover or dandelion, are the ideal, even if it's not natural and even if the resources necessary to maintain such a lawn are expensive and toxic.

Anyway, the clover, like the dandelions, get to stay.

Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them
—Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne

What a diversity of creative wanderers: Weeds. I enjoy their beauty and variety, and do nothing to reap their rewards. I neither hoe, nor plant, nor water, nor fertilize, nor prune ... and they come and go in lovely profusion as the seasons move. Often a pleasure, sometimes a pain in the wrong place; and always an example of the wondrous assertion of Being.
—Mike Garofalo

Dandelions, Clover, and My First Lawnmower

Oh dear. My neighbor down the street is going to hate me. I watched him today out of the corner of my eye as I racked thatch. With weed tool in hand, he carefully scanned his yard for any interlopers, deftly pulling out offending dandelions and other noxious weeds by the roots and tossing them into a pile at the curb. His lawn is a verdant expanse of cool grass, interrupted only by carefully laid out flower beds, trees, and shrubs.

My own lawn, in turn, has been somewhat neglected over the years. It's more clover than grass, and hundreds upon hundreds of sunny dandelions and cat's ear dot the surface. I have no intention of trying to eradicate all the flowers, as I rather like dandelions. (Dandelions are related to sunflowers, and I suspect that if they did not wither and wilt when you plucked them, they'd be held in high regard by gardeners.)

Another neighbor stopped by while I was working to introduce himself and to let me know he and his wife were delighted to see that we were investing time and energy into transforming the yard with new bushes and trees. (There really wasn't much in the way of landscaping before we moved in.) But then he bent down to poke the lawn with his finger, and sort of hopped up and down on it, proclaiming that it was choked with thatch (hence the springiness) and lacking in nitrogen (a veritable welcome mat for clover). I cheerfully told him I liked the clover, and kind of hoped it would turn out to be the white and pink clover of my childhood. He looked at me like I was crazy. But he's probably forgotten how wonderful it is to lie in the grass on a summer's day, plucking clover.

Still, as much as I like the idea of letting the lawn go wild, perhaps even scattering wildflower seeds here and there and letting it all return to a prairie-like state, I do concede that I live in an urban area. And so, I'll try very hard to keep the grass trimmed and I'll try to minimize the impact my dandelions have on my neighbors' lawns, perhaps by deheading them before they go to seed.

But I think lawns are kind of unnatural, and over the years I hope to reduce the actual grassy patches, increasing the space for flower beds and planting native greenery that won't hog water or demand lots of attention.

Still, for the moment, we do need to keep the grass cut. Now here's where I need to make a confession. Before today, I have never mowed a lawn. Yes, I'm 39 years old, and I had never, ever, in my entire life, had to cut the grass.

How'd that happen?

Well, when we were kids, the chore fell to my brother Ed, plain and simple. I had other tasks, mostly indoors. Ed's chore was to cut the grass. Then throughout my days as a renter, I was never held responsible for keeping the grass cut. That was the landlord's job. Later, living in a condo, the association hired a company to cut the grass (what a ripoff that was, too, at $50/week for five minutes of work).

So now, with The Box House, there's a fairly decent size lawn that needs a'trimming. It's small by most suburban or small-town standards, but for a city lot there's actually quite a bit of grass. Mom thought we should hire a service, but I'm cheap and said we could do it ourselves. Ted has mowed more than enough lawns over the years to be enthralled with cutting this one, and so the task has fallen to me. I'm actually a bit excited.

So this week, I bought a lawn mower. I feel so grown up. It's a Scott manual push mower (trying to minimize my carbon footprint and all). And so far, I love it. It's soooo incredibly easy to use, and contrary to any reservations I might have had, it's actually pretty lightweight. I got the entire yard done in about 20 minutes.

I do need a few other tools--edger, string trimmer, etc.--to really do a good job, but I think I might actually enjoy the chore of mowing a lawn.

Just don't ask me to take out all the dandelions.

EPA Factoid: Lawn mower exhaust is full of hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds (V.O.C.s). An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study found that approximately 9% of some types of air pollution nationwide comes from the small engines required to run lawn and garden equipment. In metropolitan areas, the concentration of lawns causes this number to increase in some instances to 33%.

I am not a lover of lawns. Rather would I see daisies in their thousands, ground ivy, hawkweed, and even the hated plantain with tall stems, and dandelions with splendid flowers and fairy down, than the too-well-tended lawn.
—W.H. Hudson, The Book of a Naturalist, 1919