It's A Trap.

No, seriously. It's a trap. If you had known it'd be another lawn care post, I probably couldn't get you here to read this. I lured you here with a memetastic title and opened with jovial language so you'll probably at least skim my post. Ahhhh. Kadie wants pageviews.

I came up with this post topic yesterday at work while cleaning up a month's (or more) worth of shoddy, negligent string trimming on the part of my coworkers. I'm talking about long, shaggy grass on the edges of the lawns. Granted, you'll save yourself a little time while grooming your lawn, but honestly, you aren't doing your lawn any favors by not trimming it....every time.

I also recommend you trim your lawn wherever the grass ends. It could be on a walkway, patio, bark, installed edging....gravel....busy highway.... When you trim a swell bevel cut around your whole lawn, you'll not only make it look like a delightfully verdant pillow, but the trim is absolutely required to complete the look. Even a not-so-verdant lawn looks more classy with a beveled perimeter (assuming there's grass there to trim...). A bevel is almost always popped into your lawn by the professional grass groomer, and offers a clean, manicured look to your little patch of green.

You may notice that after not trimming your grass for a while, the trim will be all yellowy and sparse. It's because your grass isn't trained to be short. Yes, grass can be trained to be green and short at the same time. After training your grass to keep a shorter crop, it will be less unruly between mows and not leave a Yellow Brick Road perimeter when you trim again. Yikes.

Heee! I made a comic.

Grass training... Haaa. But really. Let's delve into a delightful bit of history... the evolution of grass!
 Briefly... Grasslands as we know them evolved alongside grazing mammals in an evolutionary arms race. Browsing animals began to develop hypsodont teeth (continuously growing teeth...that's why horses need their teeth filed down sometimes) in response to the development of phytoliths (tiny silica spikes on the leaves of grass...the reason you get grass cuts. They also cause the teeth of grazing animals to be worn down) in response to the animals eating the plant. Isn't evolution great? Anyway, what this means is that grass evolved to be mowed. The root systems even support constant grazing. Lawn mowers these days serve as "artificial grazers", keeping your grass healthy and living up to its evolutionary worth.

Since grass supports being "grazed", your lawn will continue to thrive even when cropped shorter--like when you bevel your trims... Again, you aren't doing it any favors when you neglect to mow and trim.

There are, however, exceptions to the "trim it every time" thing I do at work.
*When the grass is too dry to grow, let alone be green, feel free to give it a break... and some water.
*When you are just starting to train your grass (though this isn't a great time of year to try to train your grass), it'll be sparse and yellowy. Trim it every other week to allow it time to recuperate and put out runners from its rhizomes. This will thicken up the trim and allow it to be green when short (think: more grass than dirt).

When starting to train your grass, give it plenty of water and if you haven't fertilized lately, use a mild, balanced summer mix to your lawn (we used 19-19-19 as a summer ratio). I would certainly recommend starting to train your grass much earlier in the summer/late spring when it's not so gosh darn hot.

Enjoy your pro-style lawn. Trap ya later. :)

Princess Pantsless.

This will be one of those "The Mower You Know" posts but I will spare the practical landscape advice (although I could go to town on string trimmers). This is a little anecdote from today.

My boss, Flo, is one of the most amazing people ever. Spunky, strong and kind. She's the type who will let you have the day off early but still pay you for an 8 hour day just because. Or buy the whole crew lunch. Or let you borrow any of her equipment, including the dump trucks and Walkers, so your lawn can look nice too.

She has to deal with a lot of people every day....homeowners and property managers and such. Some are nice. Some are not so much. It takes a lot out of you to deal with the not-so-nice people. Kudos to Flo. She's tougher than a lot of people.

Flo always says that everyone should have to work landscape maintenance at some point in their life. I totally agree. You learn the best way to lay out your landscaping so you can get lawn mowers through (seriously, someone has randomly spaced boulders in their grass and you can't even get a push mower through...you gotta string trim the whole thing!), which trees will overpopulate your yard with suckers and runners, what kind of plants the deer will just decimate... and just how hard landscape maintenance can be.

Then there are the complainers. I can handle them to a point, especially if they're nice about it. But some of the complainers are just plain nasty. Obviously, they have never worked a day of their life in the dirt. Perhaps they don't realize that when we're mowing and trimming a line of housing units, each one more identical than the last, we need to divvy up our energy along a half-mile stretch of units. Most people compliment our work and tell us we're pretty and make us the most amazing blueberry pancakes I've ever tasted. And then to some people, we can never be good enough.

That brings me to the case of Princess Pantsless. She lives in an $800,000 condo right near the middle of the aforementioned half-mile stretch of identical units. Princess Pantsless is a 50-something-year-old woman who always wears the big bug-eyed sunglasses. Her newly inflated boobs obviously loft her ego to another level. She cornered my sister and I earlier this summer and half-heartedly apologized for "not being dressed". Indeed, she was wearing just a shirt that barely reached mid-thigh and must believe bras are for squares. She wanted to inform us that her shrubs "looked crappy". I apologized and let her know that there had been sort of a pandemic through the development of the sand cherries going belly-up. Our crew had been replacing them all week. She wanted hers done now. Also, she had torn out a bunch of lilacs and wanted us to lay sod where she had done that. We don't lay sod...but I told her we could reseed it... She sure used the word "crappy" a lot.

When we informed Flo of the 'requests' she asked if it was from the lady who never wears pants. Yes it was. Apparently, she's always drawing attention to the fact that she's not wearing them. 'Pardon my nudity. I'm so rich I don't need to wear pants...' We did her bidding and figured she'd be happy. Not so.

Just today, she attacked Kasidy, again, not wearing pants, to let her know that she and her husband thought their lawn looked "disgustingly crappy" and went on to complain about the grass wasn't cut to the exact height they wanted, etc., etc. When Flo went to discuss the altercation with them, they told her to "get the f*** off their property". Gladly. They are the only people who have told us they thought we were doing a terrible job. They're going to get an earful from the head of the homeowner's association. He's on our side. :) We're gonna skip their lawn from here on out.

My point is: be nice to your landscape maintenance worker (make us some blueberry pancakes?) and we will go out of our way to make sure your lawn is extra well-cared for. Even if you're a random unit in a half-mile stretch. Be a nasty, and we'll skip your lawn.

Plus, Kasidy has a thing about making therapeutic pinata effigies to destroy... Princess Pantsless is next on the list. Flo wants in on the action too.

But Flo always says that in heaven, it'll be those nasty people who'll be mowing her lawn while she sips a rum and coke on the patio. Doesn't that just sound heavenly?

The Awful Truth About Blue Spruce.

You can bet your boots that somewhere in the world, everyday, a landscape maintenance worker is getting hit in the head or face by a tree branch. I bring up this totally plausible, though not extensively-researched assertion because, today, I was that landscape maintenance worker. I have been working for Blooming Flowers and Grass for the past 4 summers, so you could pretty much say I'm a pro. But, despite my experience and walking-backward skills, I will get hit in the head or face with a tree branch at least once per day. OR get hit in the head or face enough in one day to fill up two weeks worth of daily tree-bashings (that also includes bashings from large shrubs...like dogwoods).

Although grass doesn't particularly enjoy growing underneath trees (especially pine for some reason), it grows just enough to be really long, patchy, and scraggly. This wimpy patch of lawn is usually found beneath trees and shrubs that have low branches and cannot be reached by a lawn mower (Walkers for life!). Therefore, it must be cleaned up with a string trimmer. It is necessary to push your way through the branches to reach the highly-visible, scraggly grass near the base of the tree.

The trouble with trees is that they are pokey, covered with sap, unyielding and did I mention pokey? The most prickley of trees that I have encountered (besides Russian olive, but more on those later) is the blue spruce. It is a lovely tree that is very Christmassy, nice smelling and is a neat color to boot. The needles however, are short, stiff and very, very sharp! Blue spruce are apparently very popular on the properties we tend... Needless to say, I've had some unpleasant, pokey-branch-to-the-face encounters in my day.

If you were to take any practical knowledge from a seasoned landscape maintenance worker it would be this:
Don't plant blue spruce in such a location that you will have grass underneath it!

This has been... "The 'Mower' You Know"