Refrigerator Copy
Column published the week of May 5, 2008 www.theleeonline.com © 2008, Lee Ostaszewski
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Fescue Folly |
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By Lee
Ostaszewski My lawn is mocking me. For all the things I enjoy about the
spring: the nicer weather, the start of baseball, the lack of snow., etc., a lawn with attitude is the part I hate. That and the fact that ten minutes after
the outside temperature first officially reaches warm, a generation of
mosquitoes can hatch, mature, attend college, get married, buy a house, raise
a family, then start attacking us, forcing us back inside. There are so many mosquitoes coming from so
many different directions, it’s like the Couldn’t mosquitoes leave us alone for
one month, a day, an hour? While on
the subject, couldn’t the As for my lawn, it continues to taunt
me. As if saying in its deceptively
soft, lawn voice, “You want to make me lush, green, and manicured, don’t
you? Just like you see in those fancy
fertilizer commercials. That’s what
you want, isn’t it Mr. Tough Guy, with your mulching mower and weed
whacker. Well it ain’t going to
happen. Not this summer! Not this lawn!” And then big clumps turn brown for no
apparent reason. Currently, my yard resembles the matted
fur of a long-haired dog with poor personal hygiene skills. Lawns prefer this. I believe there are two types of plant life
in this world. There’s the plant life
that takes pride in its appearance, grows uniformly, and requires little
attention by humans, such as the pear tree in my yard and certain
shrubbery. Then there’s plant life
that, if it wore clothes, would be similar to me in the sense that it can
barely dress itself. Recently, for example, I went most of
one day wearing my tee-shirt inside out in public. My son, Kevin, pointed the mistake out to
me. Being a teenager, he did so with
the sort of exasperated tone I expect to hear from him again when I’m 95
years old, living in his spare bedroom, and no longer have bladder control. It’s a cycle of life sort of thing. So on the one hand you have the
well-groomed vegetation – think of them as the Ryan Seacrests of the plant
world – and on the other hand you have all the other plant life in the world
which grows in haphazard, unruly |
fashion. Think Nick Nolte’s hair in that famous
police mug shot photo of him. We try our best to tame the unruly
vegetation. We call this
landscaping. If we were a truly
intelligent species, such as antelope or pigeons, we would avoid landscaping
altogether. Or we would only plant the
tidy, Ryan Seacrest-types. Another
option would be to allow the Nick Nolte plants to run amok but not worry
about them. This is the stage my lawn
seems to have reached on its own. There is, however, one more lawn care
option. It might be considered a tad
eccentric, but we could put down artificial turf. The downside is that over the long haul it
will kill us. This is the latest fear of modern life
which we must be on high alert about.
Some people believe the artificial fields that our children play
sports on could be releasing toxic fumes or causing lead poisoning. Just the other week in But the bigger concern is that other
types of artificial grass surfaces could be releasing toxic chemicals
whenever it’s extremely hot outside.
Since these surfaces are made out of plastics and rubbers, it makes
some sense that there could be some off-gases emitted. But hey, isn’t that true of all of us? If artificial grass can heat up and
start producing toxic chemicals, I wondered about asphalt pavement? Have you noticed the stuff is everywhere. And
like artificial grass it’s also made of chemicals. Chemicals that probably produce off-gases
on hot days. So how long do you
suppose before the local TV news stations are running news story promos such
as: “Driveways of Death: Are Our Roads Killing Us?” I give it a week. Meanwhile, my lawn still mocks me. More so now than ever since it knows my
threats to replace it with artificial grass or pave over it with asphalt are
hollow. But what if they invent an
artificial turf just toxic enough to kill mosquitoes, and most |