Emotional Support Lawn

This spring, thanks to the epic winter rains, I decided to start regrowing the patch of lawn in the back yard that I had let go brown during the drought. I seeded it, top dressed it with chicken shit, and kept it watered all summer long.

The result, many months later, is this rectangle of green fluff.

Which is good, but not great. It's basically green all the way across but it has some fully bald spots, and some spots that are technically bald but which the grass blades have sort of covered up.

I think the fescue I planted last spring didn't have quite enough time to get established before the heat of the summer kicked in and higher temps caused it to go dormant, so most of the growth ended up being from the bermuda grass (or maybe zoysia? I dunno) that was left over and dormant in the ground.

Anyway, the first step here is to cut down any weeds and plum suckers with my hoe, which apparently included a mushroom of some sort.

This is followed by a nice short mow, since this will be basically the last time I can mow it for a good 6 weeks or so. Being shorter also makes it easier to spread the compost.

And then we can sprinkle on the new grass seed.

Which is actually getting kind of old at this point, but no bother. It still works.

I mostly concentrated the sprinkling in the more bare patches of lawn, after which it looked like this.

Hmm, that's odd, I'm sure it should have sprouted by now. I waited a whole five minutes before taking this picture. Oh well, I also spent a little time with the string trimmer cleaning up around the edges.

And now we get to the shittiest part.

Literally. (And if you're wondering why one of the bags was upside-down, a rat had chewed a hole in the bag while it was sitting around waiting to be sold at Home Despot).

They say this stuff is supposed to be composted chicken manure, but it sure smells pretty fresh to me. Luckily it and its smell stays outside, and I stay inside, so it's not too much of a bother.

Spacing out the bags, and thus piles, like this makes it very easy to spread an even layer with the garden rake.

Then all that's left to do is give it a good soak.

And then we wait.