Planting Grass

     We “put down the boards.”  Literally.       

     Having a grass lawn was important to my mother.  It must have been, for it was a lot of work, for all of us.

     This was back in the day when the house projected above the treeless prairie, defenseless against the relentless wind, subject to being surrounded by sunflowers, kochia, and a blue-bladed grass so tough even hungry cows would ignore it, with no Ford tractor and rotary mower to whip the vegetation into shape.  It was the same era when 100 Chinese elms went in 30 yards north of the house.

     The elms weren’t big enough to stop any wind yet.  Nothing stopped the south wind from having its way with the farmyard. 

      Two other impediments hampered the establishment of a bluegrass lawn.  The tank house supplied the water pressure, which wasn’t much when it came to irrigating a lawn.

     We still had chickens, free range chickens.  We didn’t know we had free range chickens.  We just knew that during the day, there were chickens anywhere and everywhere about the yard.  They had sense enough to go back through the trap door of one of two chicken houses at night.  There they could find a water source, nest boxes (which they didn’t always use), roosts, and a grain trough that got filled regularly in winter, not so regularly in summer.

      At some point, the chicken house south and east of the house came down.  There was still the one north and east of the house, between the house and the old red barn.  Chickens and newly planted lawns don’t mix well.  Not if the goal is to actually have a grass lawn.  Chickens love to scratch through the fine soil, to dig nest holes to sit in and dust themselves.

     The first stage was to level and grade the soil around the house.  The house used to stick up higher above the earth.  1930’s soil from the fence line just south of the house provided some fill.  When that work was done, the house stood six or eight inches above grade instead of the foot or so before the work.

     The answer to the chicken problem was a picket fence.  Dad did that pretty much himself in the fall when the wheat was planted and the hay was stacked.  He dug holes about the size of a two pound coffee can.  Into the holes he drove steel T posts.  He filled the hole with cement that surrounded and anchored the posts. 

     Two rails made of 2 X 4’s were bolted horizontally to the posts. Then came the pickets, cut from one inch lumber, spaced about two inches apart.  Dad cut every one of those pickets with his “Monkey Wards” PowerKraft saw.  He had a jig of sorts so that he could cut the pickets to length and get the correct angle on the top without measuring every one, I think. 

     One day we came home from school to find Dad limping around.  In the assembly line process of cutting pickets, he had developed the habit of pulling the saw back until he felt it hit his thigh.  Unfortunately, the blade guard failed to retract once.  The blade took a nip out of his thigh.  It was bad enough he went to Hugo to get the wound patched up.

     The yard protected from the chickens was nearly ready to plant.  I remember planting several times.  Mom learned from experience the best way to plant.  We worked in some old cow manure that laid around long enough to be fine and not lumpy.  Then we raked as carefully as if we were floating fresh concrete.  The grass seed scattered on top of the corrugations from the raking stayed in place better than on a smooth surface.

     Two things still had the power to destroy the careful seeding:  wind and water.  Careless watering or a rainstorm would send the soil running, carrying the light seed with it.  The wind would quickly dry out the soil surface, a no-no for sprouting grass seed, and drift the seed everywhere.

     We planted more than once.  Eventually, we planted in sections.  The whole yard was too big of a project.  I remember once going to visit neighbors, a birthday party or something.  On the way home, Mom gasped and said, “Oh my gosh!  I forgot to turn off the water!”

     The old Chevy made haste getting home.  Sure enough, the hose turned loose to run on the new soil north of the house was still running.  There was a big shallow mud puddle just west of the 500 gallon fuel tank that stood next to the north wall of the house.  (The tank held distillate, our winter heat source.)

     Mom found it easier to keep the surface wet if the soil got a good soaking prior to planting.  Unfortunately, a two or three hour soaking was too much.  We did the best we could to restore the grade north of the house, but for a long time there was a depression where that mud puddle stood.  It would puddle up after a heavy thunderstorm or when the snow melted and stood on the frozen soil.

     I suppose it was possible to spend all day on a windy day keeping the soil watered so it couldn’t blow away.  But Mom found a better way.  She gathered a bunch of old 1 X 12’s and laid them side-by-side between house and picket fence forming a sort of wood pavement.  Every day the boards would come up, a row or two at a time, water applied, and the boards went back down.  It was an arduous task. 

      The boardwalk (but you better not be caught walking on those boards unless you were watering) served two purposes.  It kept the nasty wind from the seeded surface.  It kept the soil moist.  I can still remember the aroma that arose when the sprinkled water hit the mixture of Mother Earth and old cow manure.  It was like the fresh smell of a brief shower that soaked down the dusty surface on a hot summer day.

      When the grass began to sprout, the boards came off, but stayed nearby.  Many a time we covered tender shoots of grass with the boards if a strong wind or thunderstorm threatened.  The work was not done even when the grass sprouted and took root.  Plenty of weeds found their way into the planting via the blow dirt and the cow manure.

      It was a while before the grass was strong enough to withstand mowing.  The planting remained off-limits.  The oldest brother caught the devil for straying off the sidewalk with his baseball spikes on.  Once, it must have been harvest, I sat on the step, took off my boots and emptied the wheat from them onto the grass.  When the evidence of that act was discovered, I was ordered to “march right out there and pick those wheat seeds off the lawn.”  Which I did.     

     The grass had to be mowed.  The first two mowers were reel type where the power was supplied by the pusher.  I couldn’t push the first one.  It was second hand.  As I recall, it had wooden wheels with steel rims.  Behind the blade came a wooden roller, a lot like a rolling pin.  The handle was all wood.  It had no grass catcher.  Mowing was followed by raking and gathering.  We thought the milk cows would enjoy the clippings, they smelled so good, but the cows usually ignored them..

     The folks bought a new mower, from Wards, Sears, or Gambles, I don’t recall.  It was all metal except for tires and plastic caps here and there.  It was much easier to push, but still a goodly task, especially if the grass got too big.  It had a catcher with a galvanized tin bottom and canvas sides.  It hooked to the blade plate on the bottom.  A wire on the back hooked it to the handle.  That mower rests in retirement in the farm shop today.  A series of second hand power mowers came and went before the new Comet came from Gambles.

        The picket fence was another problem.  It had to be painted, a terrible task even Tom Sawyer would find challenging.  The gates failed.  The lawn was healthy enough to fend for itself.  We used it for a football field with many a piano student whose turn at the keyboard was done.  The chickens invaded, leading us to nickname the south lawn “Debris Field”.  Contact with fresh chicken poop was both unpleasant and unavoidable.

     To replace the fence, we planted Rocky Mountain Junipers to form a hedge.  It took over the picket fence, which got removed a little at a time.  The picket fence didn’t invade the grass.  The hedge did.  It sent out roots throughout the grass, robbing it of moisture and shading it from sunlight.

     As long as Mom lived here, she applied many a gallon of water to keep the bluegrass going.  I wasn’t that dedicated.  In the drought of the first decade of the 21^st Century, I gave up watering the grass.  That decision probably cost the life of the blue spruce on the northwest corner of the house.

     The bluegrass clings to life, going great guns in the cool spring weather after the snow melts, going dormant in June’s heat, sometimes recovering during the summer monsoon.  It spread from its original planting north under the clothes line and into the elm patch. 

     Apparently, some of the washed and blown away seeds established themselves down wind and downstream.  A big patch of bluegrass grows on the east edge of the farmyard.  Another patch grows in the draw running from near the house well southeast into the Lickdab, nearly a half mile away from the original planting.     

           If my mother would come back today, she might begin our visit with some pleasantries, but the second item on her agenda would be to take me to task for letting that lawn go to dust.  “Think of all the work of planting, watering, and putting those boards down!”

      Yes, and shoving that old push mower around window wells and fence posts, and trimming along all of that picket fence and house foundation with the old sheep shears before the days of string trimmers.  A bluegrass lawn was, and still is, a lot of work.