Adopting a Lawn

When I lived in Manhattan, I did not have a lawn of my own. True, there was a strip of grass between my apartment building and the pavement, but I soon learned that that was not my lawn. I remember the first time I went down on an August evening to open my folding chairs and set up a barbecue grill on the strip. The superintendent came running out shouting and tripped over my rubber tub causing water and plastic ducks to splash on the sidewalk.

After Grunhilda and I moved to the suburbs and bought a house, we decided it was time to have a lawn of our own. The house was on a barren plot of land overgrown with trees. There was no grass. We had no lawn. Everybody else had a lawn, a beautiful lawn. We felt lonely. We planted seeds, taking care to be sure our timing was right. Nothing happened. Months went by and there was no change. We tried loosening up as we planted the seeds. We planted seeds in the morning, in the afternoon, on the spur of the moment, but no luck.

We went to the Lawn Doctor and had tests made, but he assured us that there was no basic problem. We were capable of having a lawn. He suggested we relax and not worry about it. It would come. We relaxed but nothing came. In desperation, we tried an artificial sod transplant. It didn’t take. Finally, we decided to adopt a lawn.

You think it’s easy to adopt a lawn? Think twice Buster. We went to every nursery in the area, but they all told us the same thing -- you have to wait three to five years. We told them that it didn’t have to be Kentucky Bluegrass, we’d take a mixture, even a little crabgrass; no luck.

We sought out the sleazy mouthpiece, R. Noll Palmer - black-market dealer in lawns. Palmer said, “You want to adopt a lawn? For a price I can get you one in three weeks.” “Will it be young and healthy?” we asked. “Brand new” he assured us. What else could we do? We paid.

Three weeks later Palmer called. “I’ve got your lawn,” he said. “Meet me at the Stamford Motel at 3:00 AM.” We drove over, our hearts pounding. There was Palmer. He got into his sleazy sports car and told us to follow him. We drove for hours into back country. We stopped by a low, rundown ranch house. There was the lawn, small and beautiful. “Whose lawn is it?” we asked. “Don’t ask,” he said, “The couple was young, they never married.”

We got out of the car, took off our shoes, hugged the grass with our toes. Suddenly I realized I had stepped in something. Palmer looked at me. “It won’t all be honey and hot waffles,” he said. “It’s not easy to raise a lawn. It has to be cleaned. You have to feed it and give it water.”

The awesome responsibility of raising a lawn hit me. The lawn wouldn’t be small and cute for long. It would grow. Then what would we do? We decided to go ahead. If it got too big for its britches, we could always cut it down to size.