Relative Something

With all my attention of the last few weeks focused on the walls and furniture in our house, the yard has been mostly ignored. Last night, I squeezed in a couple of hours outside, and what I found was rather ugly, especially in light of our plan to be showing the place to buyers. There are a lot of things growing in our yard, and most of them aren’t grass.

Now, if you know me, you are probably thinking this is a good thing. I have spent most of the 25 years we have lived in the present location, reducing the areas of our lot that were lawn grass. But there are still spots that are supposed to be grass, and they seem to be giving in to the momentum I created to transition away from lawn and over to perennial ground cover.

In the areas that I let go natural, I lay down a lot of leaves as ground cover, which helps control weed growth. The grass areas don’t have that bed of leaves, and have become fertile ground for a wide variety of weeds that have infested.

As the month of April wound down, we enjoyed the blessing of plenty of rain showers here, and those April showers have brought May weeds (not flowers) on my lot. When Cyndie was last in town, we picked up some grass food with weed control to spread on the lawn, but it requires a forecast of at least 24 hours without rain. I haven’t been able to apply it yet.

While I was out mowing the lawn, and weeds, with my human powered reel mower, I contemplated the impression our yard will give to couples checking this place out. It occurred to me that the people who will find our house appealing will very likely be similar-minded enough that they will see the existing landscape as an attractive asset, not a negative.

I can hope.