Where the green grass goes
Posted on Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Shuddering down the freeway, my car labored to maintain the minimum 65 miles per hour needed to fend off the tractor-trailer rig behind me. A battered blue Ford pickup pulled alongside. A pile of rusty shovels, hoes and rakes lay upon a mound of dirt piled against the cab. The well-tanned older man behind the steering wheel stared straight ahead, a dirty cap pulled low over his forehead. The hot wind blasting through the open windows made the loose flap of whiskery skin on his neck flutter rhythmically. Behind him, cars hung back to avoid the cloud of dust swirling out of the back of his truck. I was jealous of that man. Some because of his great tan, but mainly because of the truck. My car shook because of the load of grass sod in the trunk. The weight made the car’s rear end squat. I had exceeded the factory weight limit and probably violated a state law or two. I wasn’t concerned about getting a ticket from a state trooper, but I did fear dying. It would take at least 10 minutes to get the contraption back up to speed. If I were pulled over, I would like to see the trooper’s
sweaty face if he discovered the 20 squares of grass stuffed neatly in the trunk of my midsize import.
He would probably peer at the lush Zoysia, then into my lowered eyes, with a combination of sad bemusement and a smidgen of embarrassed disgust, then wave me on my way, pitying me for not owning the de rigueur vehicle of Arkansas, a truck.
I’ve never owned a truck. Mostly I just crammed stuff into the trunks and back seats of cars. It’s surprising the things that will fit into even the smallest of cars.
Chairs, tables, lawn mowers, even beds — when properly bungee-corded in — rode proudly. But I always avoided making eye contact with other drivers.
On this hot day I was looking forward to relieving my car of its burden. That meant unloading sod squares from a trunk whose lid would creep stealthily down and rap against my skull.
It was the price I paid for my sedan’s indignities.
But this isn’t about my embarrassed car. It’s a tale of the greenbladed cargo and the past labors of plumbers.
A while back, a broken waterline required the digging of a trench across my side lawn and, after hanging a hard right, uphill to the house.
I believed the insouciant plumbers when they told me they’d do their best to restore my lawn to its previous condition. Their best was to languidly toss dirt in the trench and wave as they drove away.
Don’t think I didn’t appreciate having water to bathe in and to drink. But having a yard that looked like Verdun after a vigorous shelling was not so cool.
One day I stood, arms folded, and gazed upon my scarred lawn.
I glanced back at my wife, who had silently crept up behind me... perhaps because I often did the same to her.
“I can fix this,” I said, after my fright at her sudden appearance subsided.
“I’ve sodded before,” I reminded her.
“That’s true,” she said quietly.
A previous plumbing screwup left a smaller dirt slash. I naively decided that raking dirt about and scattering grass seed would fix things.
It sprouted nicely and grew quickly, but within a week it was withered and dead. Very dead.
I’ve never had a green thumb or, for that matter, anything other than flesh-colored thumbs. But I assumed I could grow grass.
Out of desperation, I discovered the wonders of sod.
Driving to and from work I’d often seen groups of sod-toting men transform a barren patch of ground into something resembling the verdant hillsides of Ireland, but with a grid pattern.
I decided to re-sod my defiled yard.
The process seemed simple enough. But I have this spatial relationship thing. If something needs to be cut in a certain way or at a certain angle, I cut it the opposite way.
I need supervision.
But after buying my first pieces of sod, I realized that I could correctly lay square things side by side.
I laid it, watered it, fertilized it, stomped it, watered it some more and it grew. And it looked marvelous.
It blended in and it didn’t die. I was pleased to discover something so quick and easy.
This time, staring at my desecrated lawn, I expected the same. Rake the dirt, scatter in fertilizer, flip the sod into place, then head indoors to the air-conditioned living room couch.
The dirt and its contents conspired against me.
I attacked the mound of dirt trailing down my yard with a pick. Sparks flew as I bounced the pick off hidden shards of gray shale. Struggling, I loosened the rocks one by one and let them roll downhill.
I would free a football-size chunk, watch it tumble away and find a bigger rock in its place.
I hacked away for an hour, to little effect.
A disgustingly healthy tree, an oak or sequoia or something, grew arrogantly 5 feet from the trench. The tree’s roots had grown into a dense bullet-proof web that spread out from the trunk, a woody barrier that resisted the tools wielded by my toothpick arms.
The trenching machine diced up many of these roots. They were woven through the dirt and wrapped around the boulders; many were still attached to the ground.
These had to be dug out one at a time, chopped up and yanked away by hand. I filled two large trash cans with these starchy protuberances.
Finally slumping to the ground, I considered a puzzler.
How could there even be a mound of dirt ? The plumbers dug the trench, laid in the thin plastic line and filled it in. Left over was a dirt berm that ran along the steep part of the yard. There was more dirt left over than was taken out in the first place.
Maybe Stephen Hawking could figure out the physics of dirt, but unless I wanted to sod over the dirt hump, I had to reduce the mound.
Laboring sullenly, I cleared enough space to re-sod an area the size of a Danish modern coffee table. That was 1 percent of the area awaiting grass. Exhausted and savaged by mosquitoes, the innards of my arms ached in places I’d seen only on an ancient chart at my doctor’s office. I reached deep inside, drawing on my steely college-dropout reserves, and did what I was best at. I quit. I went inside and read a bunch of blogs. A year passed.
Pulling into the driveway each evening I averted my eyes. I foolishly hoped a downpour would sweep away the excess dirt, but the extinction-level rains this past spring didn’t disturb the dirty burden.
A few more months of this forced me into action. I drove to the sod sellers, filled my trunk and lumbered home.
After briskly rubbing the knot delivered by my trunk lid, I placed the sod on the upper end of my flat driveway. It looked pretty good there. I briefly thought about sodding the entire thing. The emerald expanse would distract from the bare dirt on the “real” lawn. Childishly giggling, we could roll down it, tumbling into traffic.
I let the idea go. We’d have to park on the street and the neighbors might look askance, although they weren’t usually askance-lookers.
The daily temperatures crept upward as I worked. I theorized that this heating was caused by the movement of a giant turtle holding the earth on its back. Obviously the heat was getting to me.
To beat the heat and speed the job, I collected an array of tools and implements, artfully arranged in my new blue wheelbarrow.
Before making these expensive purchases, I had been using the pick, a rusty shovel and a spackling knife.
Now I had a heavily oxidized shovel, an ax, a sledgehammer with an ax blade, a garden rake, the pick with an ax blade, a leaf rake and an old kitchen knife. And the spackling knife.
Later, to complete the set, I picked up a garden hoe.
I would hack away at the unforgiving ground with each implement in turn until, overcome with what I quaintly call the vapors, I would squat in the dirt and carve at the straggler roots with one of the knives.
What this meant was that I had reduced my expectations from clearing half of the barren space each evening to clearing just enough for one chunk of sod.
“How much did you get done ?” my wife asked.
“A fair amount. Got one piece down,” I replied in a low voice.
“Two hours to get one piece down ?” she asked.
“Being a digger is hard,” I mumbled hoarsely. Then I would shower, sprawl on the nearest flat surface and groan dramatically from my onepiece-of-sod-at-a-time exercise regimen.
And so it goes.
Today my drive is partially carpeted with grass. I concentrate on the driveway when I come home every night. It’s pleasant to look at.
To my left is the lawn, which does look better. Sod has advanced about halfway down the yard and the right corner is a lush emerald green.
I’ve left the hardest portion for last. At work, and in those quiet moments before I fall asleep, I dread the task.
I still have a mound of rock and root dirt that wraps around the most rugged part of the lawn. The lowest bit borders the street; sometimes while digging I have to leap away from passing cars.
I know I need to get in there and clear the excess dirt away once and for all. But that means I’ll have to really, really work.
But my proud laziness compels me to clear a spot the exact size and shape of a piece of sod. I chop lazily away, then install my green chunk.
The spare dirt I toss backward. While this reduces the length of the mound, it adds to the pile’s height. Eventually the pile will tower over the lawn like an African anthill. Maybe I should just turn it over to some army ants. Anything to delay the denouement. But I continue digging away at the mound, a teaspoon at a time. I should upgrade to a tablespoon, but I don’t want to overreach. Someday I’ll have to mow the entirety of my lawn. That day is coming, but for now it exists, dirt-encrusted, in a distant beautifully green future. E-mail:
jsykes@arkansasonline. com
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