Battling Elements

from Art Department Weekly | Issue 79 Vol. 11

by Art Department Weekly

Hungry for a Challenge

BATTLING ELEMENTS

Two bags of seed, four bags of top soil, and some attention produced a lush lawn if only for a minute

Photos by Madeline Vega

START TO FINISH The lawncare guys ripped up everything not killed by the neighbors’ dog the previous summer. In April we had a mud pit. Maybe if I’d bought drought resistant seeds, the grass could have handled the fig tree soaking up all the water. Other parts are still grassy.

The grass grew nicely, but the dog still ran cirlces to wear a path. Then came the weeds.

**We had to buy a lawn mower because the landscapers never came and the neighbors would leave their dog's poop in the tall grass in the yard.**

WEEDS AND WATER LEVELS The landlord had said in April that I could take on the lawn, but then changed his mind. I had already done all the work to plant seeds and water them twice a day. I tried to tell myself that meant the weeds were the lawncare guys’ problem, but these guys don’t even mown the lawn regularly. So, to prevent them from leaving me with nothing but mud in September, I spent a week ripping out all the clover and other broad leaves before reseeding again. We made a rain gauge to try to figure out how much help we were getting from above.

The downstairs neighbors told the landscapers to rip everything out of this section of the yard in 2015. Then the next year they installed these wood planks. Then they did nothing. The dog used it for digging holes in 2017. I filled the holes. In 2018 I staked it out as my own. They said nothing.

ENVIRONMENTAL RELATIONS The most my kids cared about plants before this summer was limited to what kind of imaginary potions they could mix with the leaves they pulled and shredded on walks home from school. Then I made them pull some weeds and plant some seeds. Then Boom decided Betty should evolve as quickly as all the plants around us. Not really an expectation I had anticipated.