I made reference to killing my yard in the eulogy, so I thought I would share some pictures and the full story. The day my family left for vacation at a placed called Story Land, I decided it would be a really good idea to spray the yard with weed killer. There would be no danger to kids or animals since everybody would be gone, so it seemed like the perfect time. Monday morning I was out there spraying everything in sight with a weed killer that was guaranteed to work on sedge grass, our #1 type of weed and the bane of my existence.
When we came back from Story Land two days later, we returned to find the entire lawn shades of yellow and brown. Yes, the weeds were dead, but then so was everything else so it seemed like a little bit of a pyrrhic victory. I sword, quietly so the girls couldn’t hear, then went for the bottle of weed killer.
Turns out it was weed and grass killer.
Oops.
In my fanaticism to kill the sedge grass, I overlooked the rather large label on the outside and the warnings inside. All I saw was that it killed sedge grass … and it was on sale.
So I started making phone calls to local gardening centers, and I got the same story from each of them: you need to start over. That set off another set of phone calls to business to inquire about what’s involved in starting over, how much that costs, and what equipment was going to be necessary. What resulted was two days of hard work in the drizzle and rain.
On Sunday August 22, I used a rented sod cutter to remove the lawn. A sod cutter essentially cuts into the lawn about an inch to two and a half inches deep, essentially turning the lawn into long strips that can be rolled like carpets. While I cut, Tracey and dad rolled. Once the entire lawn was rolled, or at least as rolled as we could get it, we loaded the rolls into the trailer bed of our neighbor’s quad. He let us borrow the quad and trailer in exchange for dumping all the soil and lawn into the back of his yard. The back of our properties is bordered by a swamp, and while we don’t see it because of the trees, he does and wanted to reclaim some of the land. So we filled in a small portion for him.
On Monday August 23, dad and I spread out fresh loam/soil on the yard to replace what we’d removed. We started doing it by hand and with the quad/trailer combination, but that was taking forever. I called and had a backhoe delivered, and things picked up quickly. Dad joked at one point that while it was fun, if I destroyed the lawn again I was on my own.
The whole operation took about eighteen hours over the two days.
On Tuesday August 24th, Arello Co. from Holden came up and sprayed hydroseed over the entire lawn. It took about a week to see the first signs of life, and it was only about two weeks before I had to mow.
The result is a beautiful new weed-free lawn.
-Brady
Pingback: Brady’s Eulogy | Patrick L. Townsend