The Heat of Summer
August 25, 2011
In my subdivision there is some committee run by people who obviously have too much time on their hands. Ooops, did I just say that out loud or rather type that right here on the world wide web for all to read? This group drives around the subdivision and put signs on the lawns of people who are doing a stellar job with their landscaping.
Even under the best of circumstances I would never get one. Of that I am certain.
The thing is that we are in a severe drought. In order to keep your lawn as green and lush as some of these people do you would have to run your sprinklers for several hours every day. Presumably under cover of darkness.
My lawn is completely dead. D-E-A-D. This has less to do with my commitment to the environment and conserving our most precious resource, like I pretend to myself, and more to do with: a) water is expensive, yo! b) I kill everything living, except the small people I gave birth to, c) I am kind of forgetful about turninng on the sprinklers, and d) I like to maintain my rif-raf image.
Needless to say I have never had one of the “Wow, Your Lawn Looks Terrific!” signs in my yard. That is until last week.
Someone took the sign out of my neighbor’s yard and stuck it in mine. Thank God someone around here has a sense of humor. I wonder sometimes.
This is what my backyard currently looks like. I think we are on day 72 of temperatures over 100 degrees. I’m not sure anymore. It has broken all heatwave records. But honestly after a while damn hot seems like a good enough description.
The only green grass in my yard is the area that surrounded the slip n’ slide and some resilient weeds.
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This subdivision thing would be why we live in the middle of 7 acres of wooded wilderness. I wish I could water my woods.
We do water about 50 ft of grass around the house as a fire break. As a result we are the oasis for the wildlife. We spent an hour with our coffee yesterday morning going from one room to the other tracking the herd of deer; momma, twin fawns, a yearling and another doe, as they ate their way around the house. The confederate rose, butterfly weed, cycads, but when they finally started on the little navel orange I opened the door and let the Yorkie from hell out to chase them. It is cute to see them drink out of the birdbath, browse the olive tree, the passion flower vine (it’s all dried up anyway) but the orange tree is just too much.
August 26th, 2011 at 9:38 pmToo bad you dont have a wildlife excuse to water. We have a well, it’s not fit to drink but it waters the grass.I bet there are some deer around you, let the neighbors feed them their green stuff.
You are not alone. We are in the midwest, and also have a drought. Certain neighbors ignore the water ordinance - doesn’t bother me in the least, whatever makes you happy, but don’t get your nose outta joint about my brown grass people.
August 26th, 2011 at 9:40 pmHaha! My husband and his friends used to move the Garden of the Month club signs to the worst yards in their neighborhoods all the time!
August 26th, 2011 at 10:23 pmWell, we’ve had way TOO much rain, so we’re plenty green but most of my personal lawn is green from the thistle weeds. Awesome.
August 26th, 2011 at 10:35 pmThat’s totally how our yard is. The crabgrass is really green though!!! And our neighbors are PISSED.
August 26th, 2011 at 10:53 pmI need to get a slip and slide because you have WAY more green grass than I do.
August 27th, 2011 at 12:00 amLooks like our yard here in AZ!
August 27th, 2011 at 12:36 amOmg, that’s what our yard looks like here in Plano. We receive letters from the city mandating 2x/wk watering at specific times and then the next day a warning that we have a dying tree in our front yard that needs to be replaced. Uhhh, yeah, ya think?
Meanwhile, one of my babies, 17 years old, is now at UT, so if you see a blue-haired girl with an eyebrow piercing, give her a hug from me.
August 27th, 2011 at 12:39 amWhile we are not in as bad of shape here in FL as you are in TX, what gets my goat is the people who INSIST on watering the lawn the day after we get 3″ of rain. We are on one day a week water restrictions and it’s almost as if they’re saying, “Dammit, I don’t care how much rain we got. It’s my day to water and I’ma gonna water.” I’d much rather have a non-lawn and water to drink than a lush green lawn and nothing to drink.
August 27th, 2011 at 7:11 amPlease please please hack that sign and replace lawn with hair and looks with smells.
Please! And then plant it in a prominent place.
August 27th, 2011 at 7:31 amWe have always had the yard people commented on about being so beautiful! This year in Michigan we had a dry spell and we decided not to water this year. First time in 30 years. Our yard looks just like yours. We decided it was too expensive too and we did not want to spend the summer tied to watering and sprinklers. We actually think it is funny too. People stopping to ask what happened to our lawn…But to put a sign in people yard.. come on…
August 27th, 2011 at 7:43 amHilarious!
August 27th, 2011 at 8:34 amThat looks like what my yard would certainly look like if we lived there. I kill every plan I touch. I have finally learned to NOT touch any living plant in the area or it will die.
August 27th, 2011 at 9:18 amLive in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, so we too are in the midst of drought conditions. I am assuming Austin is the same, so I just wanted to mention that irrigation is needed, at this time, around the house to keep the soil consistently moist. Keeps the foundation from shifting, moving and cracking. We’ve had several articles in our newspaper about how the foundation repair companies have a booming business going on right now. So, we would rather pay a $100+ monthly water bill than a $6000 foundation repair bill. And the city claims that our twice weekly watering restriction is enough to keep the soil around our foundation adequately moist.
And phooey on the yard nazi’s.
August 27th, 2011 at 12:54 pmMy favorite post yet!
August 27th, 2011 at 1:49 pmMy yard looks just as bad
Big D is going on something like 62 100+ days - we broke a heat and low record almost every day this week. It’s sad but they said next week is supposed to only make it to 100 and I’m celebrating because that’s cool.
August 28th, 2011 at 3:09 amI’m surprised that people are allowed to water their lawn in drought. In Australia once the drought kicks in so does the water restrictions. Then no one has to worry about winning any awards for their gardens (which doesn’t really happen anyway, unless you actually enter a garden competition).
Plus, when you don’t have to worry about your garden you have more time for the importantthings in a summer life- pina coladas and ice cream.
August 28th, 2011 at 8:06 amEhh it’s not that bad. We haven’t had a drought (in Louisville KY) and your lawn looks better. Be optimistic, at least you have some green, unlike me who has a nice even layer of brown, covered in straw with grass seeds hoping to take root this late in the year.
August 28th, 2011 at 11:32 amI wondered when I read about your slip-n-slide. Ours never worked without a dab or two of liquid dish soap. That probably would have cleared up those funny looking green stripes in your dirt.
August 28th, 2011 at 3:25 pmI remember when you first announced you were moving to Texas and one commenter after another mentioned that the summers here are just ridiculously hot and that Texans were crazy about their sports - football in particular. It always makes me smile when I stop by and see one of your posts about the insane heat we have been having or the madness that is kids sports.
I would love to know what you thought of all the comments back them and having lived it now how they have changed.
August 28th, 2011 at 8:40 pmIt looks resplendent - for the weather ya’ll have had to endure this summer!! It would drive me nuts (and this was 14 years ago - before it was the green thing to be - aware of waste) all the sprinklers that would automatically go off (on) automatically in our Texas neighborhoods. We were the only people that manually turned it on. I always like the xeriscaped look myself…
Oh, too I remember my husband having a bit of a hissy fit about the damage a slip and slide was doing to the lawn - over looking the sanity saving benefits to me - to have the kids having fun.
Hug!!
August 28th, 2011 at 9:27 pmI have a confession. I you!! I’ve been reading you here, and sometimes elsewhere, for years… since way before you moved to Texas. And, coincidentally, way, way before I moved to Texas too. At my house, you are known as “My friend who’s not really my friend”. Mostly because I’ll think of something I read, and randomly start laughing, thinking about the perfect way you say everything. When I try to explain it to other people who are around… well, you can imagine how well that goes…
August 29th, 2011 at 2:04 amAnyway, I thought it was about time I come out of the closet at let you know, that to this “internet stalker” you are *the BEST* (but stalker is such an ugly word…)
HAHA!! Yeah, “I you”…. pretty sure there was a “love” in there. So sorry to clog up your comments with my typos!!
August 29th, 2011 at 2:06 ammy dad and i do not want to spend the holidays all by ourselves in a big house w/out my mom (9 months since she passed) and would like to spend a vacation somewhere warm w/ beaches and possibly a cruise. and if not a cruise maybe a nice place in the caribbean or mexico where we can relax but also have adventurous fun (we have enjoyed snorkeling back in the past and would probably like to do more fun things!). any suggestions will be great!! thank you!!
August 29th, 2011 at 8:22 amthanks for the smile …you made my day
August 29th, 2011 at 12:20 pmWasting water to make grass look pretty is the stupid thing I’ve ever heard. Really, it’s grass, who cares what it looks like.
August 29th, 2011 at 12:31 pmI have one of those frigging Austin (well Round Rock) HOA’s too. Any time I get a stupid letter from them regarding my lawn or fence, I call them up and yell at them to quit wasting my dues money on crap like that. I remind them we are in a) drought, b) heat wave and/or c) recession. Sometimes I even throw my age in the mix. I don’t know if it works, but it makes me feel better. And if they think a broken fence board/unkempt lawn is bad, imagine how they would feel with my dead body lying out there if I tried to work outside in this weather. And I doubt my neighbors would appreciate me hammering or mowing at 6 am, which is the only time I venture anywhere outdoors these days.
August 29th, 2011 at 12:58 pmseriously??? you have people congratulating water-wasters? Lawn is such a stupid, useless way to waste our most precious resource.
where I live (Quebec), during drought periods, watering is expressly forbidden and people with green lawns get a fine.
August 29th, 2011 at 2:09 pmSadly…I think that looks like the top of my husbands head.
August 29th, 2011 at 5:04 pmI thought for a minute you had taken a picture of MY backyard! It looks exactly the same, and we have even been watering, twice a week. At least in the winter everybody’s will be brown.
August 29th, 2011 at 5:05 pmSounds like my yard. You know it has been hot when it’s 94 outside and there is a breeze and maybe a slight drop in humidity…so you hear yourself telling the kids that it’s “so nice out! Fall-like!” haha!
August 30th, 2011 at 1:09 amIt’s not that I don’t appreciate people keeping a beautiful home/lawn but does it always need to be turned in to a competition ? Because I cannot see any other reason for actually posting a dopey sign. Isn’t telling someone, “Hey, nice yard.”, enough ?
August 31st, 2011 at 11:49 amI have lived the majority of my adult life under water restrictions in GA and SC. We are now located in a magical community in Louisiana where we have flat rate water bills. $40/month buys us as much water as we can pour out of the taps, and with four kids to keep cool, we can definitely use up water. But the strange thing is, after so many years of watering being a no-no, I don’t even think to water the lawn. So, even though I technically could create a swamp in my backyard, it doesn’t look that much different from yours — with the exception of the areas where our redneck pool (inflatable and dumpable in one afternoon) sits.
August 31st, 2011 at 4:32 pmI gave up on our lawn here in CA. We have a nice wild grass and bark area. Nobody in my neighborhood has a lawn and it’s a relief. We’re on a pretty steep hill and most people have just whatever grows and cactus.
I grew up in a MA neighborhood and my dad was a lawn fanatic and so were our other neighbors. When I was little you could sit on our porch and hear the bullfrogs in the nearby pond. The frogs are all gone now, thanks to fertilizer and pesticides on the lawns that soon made their way into the pond.
I’d be happy if the worship of lawns went away. I wonder when lawns became so darned popular. Postwar suburbia in the 50s?
August 31st, 2011 at 10:31 pmOy, that’s bad. Perhaps in need of a miracle.
September 1st, 2011 at 2:41 amI saw a sign in my neighborhood the other day……most improved yard or somesuch, BAHAHAHAH……of course, if you just spent thousands in upgrades. Gah.
(I thought of you and giggled)
September 5th, 2011 at 3:14 pm