When it comes to household — or yard, in this case — tasks, there is seldom a better feeling than sitting back with a cold beer after tidying your lawns on a hot day.
In practice though, I’m a much better admirer than I am a curator.
Life gets busy and before long the days will be short, which means my lawns have a tendency to get unkempt.
But this year I have resolved to keep my green thumb much more active. I’ve even started cutting my front lawn in both directions every time I pull the mower out.
The automatic sprinkler system at my new house also helps keep the grass looking greener on both sides of my abode.
I do seem to have run into a wider problem though.
The more I attend to my lawn, the more I want to adjust aspects within it.
I’m not dealing with too many bare patches — which are relatively easy to fix anyway — but I am dealing with a lawn structure that is much too thick.
Through various TikTok videos and word-of-mouth advice, I’ve decided that the best course of action is to scalp the lot of it and encourage more suitable growth from the outset.
But when I went to start the process with a couple of low passes, I became gun shy.
The yellowed result was far too much for the admirer in me to bear, so I lifted the blades to my normal height and continued on with a scalp-less mow.
Now, I am stuck between a garden bed and a concrete path.
Do I bite the bullet, take a leap of faith, and scalp the entire thing?
Or do I attempt some sort of Frankenstein-like patchwork job where I scalp a different small section each time to keep some semblance of green throughout the process?
I think the pertinent answer will be, “you need professional help, Tyler”.
• Tyler Maher is the editor of the News.
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