"Crabbing About Grass"

By Jerry Zezima

I have often told my wife that I’m like crabgrass: She can’t get rid of me. Now that we have real crabgrass on our lawn, I’m trying to get rid of it.

The problem, according to Vinny, our turf guru, is that I am not spreading fertilizer.

“I’ve been spreading it for years,” I told him.

“I know that,” Vinny said. “But you haven’t been spreading it on your lawn.”

Vinny installed a new lawn for us last year because the front and back yards could have won a Sahara Desert lookalike contest. The only grass that grew was, naturally, of the crab variety. Moss (not Randy or Kate) was also a prominent feature.

After Vinny and his crew spread topsoil (it wasn’t dirt cheap) and dropped seed, the grass grew thick and green, even though we immediately had a dry spell and I had to water twice a day, the same number of times I water at night.

My job this year was to make sure the lawn was fertilized. This may sound like a load of the stuff, but I forgot. I also didn’t remember that Vinny had given me an estimate last year for his services this year.

The lawn care program included fertilizing in the spring with pre-emergent crabgrass control, doing the same in late spring, the slow release of granular fertilizer in the summer, and granular fertilizer in both early and late fall.

To get that much fertilizer myself, I’d have to own an elephant. And I’d still be called Dumbo.

When my wife, Sue, and I bought our house in 1998, I was a neophyte (an ancient Greek word meaning “useless”) at yard work.

But I enjoyed cutting the grass, raking leaves and shoveling snow because it was a novelty. I quickly grew tired of it. Not helping was the fact that Sue fired me as a grass cutter because I didn’t trim the edges of the yard.

And I worked for free! Unfortunately, I was worth every penny.

That’s why we hired the landscaping company that Vinny works for. They do a great job, not only of cutting the grass and trimming the edges of the yard, but of cleaning up the property every spring and fall.

I can’t say the same for the lawn service we hired to keep the grass thick and green, which is why, last year, Sue fired them, too.

Aside from my failure to spread fertilizer this year, the problem with the grass has been that the in-ground sprinklers, which work very well, don’t reach every inch of the front and back yards.

That’s why the irrigation company sent Jon, Bob and Lorenzo to install additional sprinkler heads.

I was relieved to know that I am not the strangest customer they have ever encountered.

“That would be the 88-year-old woman who doesn’t stop talking. She said Lorenzo is fiercely handsome,” Jon recalled.

“Is she a widow?” I wondered.

“Yes,” Jon answered.

“Are you spoken for?” I asked Lorenzo, a good-looking guy with a thick, dark beard and a full head of curly brown hair.

“I sure am. And I have two kids,” said Lorenzo, who’s 26.

“That’s a 62-year age gap,” I calculated.

“Watch out, Lorenzo!” Bob joked.

The hard-working crew used a big machine called a “pipe piper” to pull sprinkler lines under the ground so new heads could be attached.

“Now all of your grass will get properly watered,” said Jon, adding that I should thatch, seed and fertilize to get the lawn going again.

“When should I do it?” I asked.

“Early,” Jon answered.

“You mean before breakfast?” I wondered.

“I mean in early fall,” he said.

“I think I’ll wait for Vinny,” I said.

“That will take care of the crabgrass,” Jon said.

“Even with all that fertilizer,” I said, “my wife still can’t get rid of me.”

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima