Body Hurt

Today, I was planning on mowing the grass, then seeding and fertilizing the lawn.

This involves passing over the lawn 3 times, once with the mower and twice with the spreader. Easy, right?

Well, I mowed. Then I looked at the front lawn and decided that I had a thatch problem. Thatch is dead grass that gets tangled up in the live grass and sinks down to the soil, preventing water and nutrients from getting to the roots of the grass, and preventing grass seed from getting down to the dirt.

My grass is yellow. It has been yellow despite my best efforts to put various fertilizers, lime, seed, etc on it to get it to green up. I figure it's the thatch preventing the stuff from getting to the soil.

So Bernie and I grab rakes and start scratching the lawn. After 10 minutes, I can tell that my body isn't going to be happy tomorrow. After an hour, I can tell that my body may not be able to get out of bed in the morning. After an eternity, we finish the front lawn, and we pack a 40-gallon trash bag with dead grass that we've raked. I then proceed to seed. (haha).

I put one-third of a 50lb bag of grass seed into the spreader and give it to Bernie. The rest of the bag goes into a bucket and I toss it into bare patches by hand. Once we finish, we soak the heck out of the lawn. I plan to fertilize when I get home from work tomorrow.

Bernie remarked to me at dinner that the damn grass had better grow after this. I totally agree. The next option is green spray paint.