Sunday, May 8, 2011

The Grass War

I have lately been struggling with the weeds and dead spots in my yard caused by a drought that we suffered last fall. Our yard’s shape has been a source of embarrassment for me for a long time. It has been improving with a bit of hard work (I’m not going to comment on our back yard- which has been relegated to Charlie our dog).


The difficulties I have been facing with the grass have reminded me of some actions that my brother Josh and I participated in when we were much younger. I believe the statute of limitations has long since expired on these acts so I can safely confess them (I think!).

Our arch-nemesis neighbor, the Carlings, were always making Josh and I angry. There are too many reasons to name here. Suffice to say that we forced to retaliate. We did so in various manners. Some of my future blogs will deal with some of the other ways that we got even with the Carlings.

We carefully watched our enemies, and took note of their weaknesses. One of their weaknesses was that they would play in their backyard without any shoes on. We devised a plan to exploit this weakness. We took pine needles from Troy Rosenlund’s pine tree and carefully placed them at the bottom of their slide. Vicious, but necessary.

Next was a more subtle plan. They were not great at taking care of their yard. So it would be no surprise if they had trouble with it. We decided to attack their yard. We filled water balloons with Round Up weed killer and threw them into their yard in a random fashion.

My parents always wondered why they had a blotchy yard.