Dad and his lawn

Those of you here in the Twin Cities have no doubt noticed the plethora of helicopters from the maple trees after our storms of the last week.  Our boulevard garden looked much weedier than it really was with all the little green ones everywhere!  I looked out the window this morning, to see the dry helicopters everywhere in our lawn.  They're visible  now that Joe was able to get out last night and tame the jungle the lawn had become...  (Mike Lynch on 'CCO radio said this morning that the mysterious noise heard all over the Cities last night was everyone starting up their lawnmowers in about a four hour time span.  I think he's right.)

Anyway, seeing all those helicopters brought Dad to mind.  Dad was a lawn guy.  Not a garden guy, a grass guy.  Nothing would do but the perfect green carpet.  We lived across the street from an undeveloped chunk of land, and Dad went so far as to spread grass seed there in hopes that it would keep the weeds down so fewer seeds would blow our way.  Of course that didn't work - Kentucky bluegrass can't compete against native weeds all on its own!  But he tried.  Back to the helicopters.  The lawn mower can't suck them out of the lawn.  We just leave them and mow down the tiny trees as they sprout.  Eventually they get the idea and die.  But that wouldn't do for Dad.  So one year he sent me out to the yard with an ice cream bucket, with instructions to pick up all the helicopters!  Mom tells me I got paid a penny a piece, so, although it took forever, I did a thorough job and made a nice little sum, especially given the rate of inflation since then! One year he used a power rake to pull up the thatch at the base of the lawn.  I'm sure he did this regularly, but this particular year stands out.  All the dead stuff ends up on top of the lawn and needs to be raked up.  And of course it started to rain before we finished.  And naturally we couldn't just leave it - it might get worked down into the lawn again.  So there we are in the rain, raking away.  Boy, did that stuff get heavy in a hurry.  We sure got some odd looks, too.

In some ways, it's too bad Dad was so into his lawn.  After he and Mom retired, they had wanted to travel more.  But Dad wouldn't leave for more than a few days if the grass was green - no one would be there to water it every day.  So they didn't get to see nearly as much as they'd hoped.  He obsessed over it until the end, always asking Mom about watering it, unable to remember they had watering restrictions, or even to realize the season.  Man, sometimes it hits me so hard that he's gone...