Lawn Limits

This isn’t what you think. Though I could talk long and hard about how we need to use fewer and smaller lawns, this is about an adventure with my own precious strip of lawn.

My home has a 10′ strip of green stuff that surrounds the perimeter of our wraparound lanai. We moved here three years ago, and my aging border collie, Shadow, has never been happier. It was the first time he had grass to roll on, and he makes use of it every day. In fact, my husband and I came up with a name for his ecstatic rolling around on the grass; we call it a “grassgasm.” So any thought I might have had to change that strip to gravel or some drought-tolerant groundcover has been put aside, at least for Shadow’s remaining years.

The previous owners of our house had a gardener come twice a month to mow and trim the lawn. They also watered the lawn daily, like most homeowners here in South Maui. I calculated that if we weaned the lawn off the daily waterings, its growth would slow, and we could reduce the carbon-producing mowings down to once a month. I slowly reduced the frequency of waterings; the grass stayed healthy and grew more slowly. My water bill dropped, to my great satisfaction, and I was able to cut the gardener’s visit to once a month. So far, so good.

Then, about a year later, I noticed that the weed to grass ratio had changed. The sprinkling of weeds had become large colonies, and in places had replaced the grass all together. I had noticed that the weeds grew faster than the grass, but I was tough and figured I could tolerate a little raggedness in between mowings, given the savings. But what I hadn’t known is that the weeds were pollinating and going to seed in less than a month, and therefore with each cycle between mowings, the weeds were out-propagating the grass.

So now the dilemma. Do I have the gardener come twice a month? Do I go out and buy a lawnmower and weedtrimmer (preferably electric) to do it myself, in between? (This is not a bad plan, except that I’m allergic to fresh cut grass, so my husband would have to take over the job–and he’s not a weekend-gardener kinda guy.) Do I let the weeds continue propagating and eventually just replace the whole thing with a non-mowed groundcover, such as thyme or a clumping grass?

For now, I’m trying not to make any hasty decisions. I’m comparison shopping for electric mowers, and I’ll keep you posted as to the decision. Whatever I do, though, will only halt the progress of the weeds. I still have to renovate what is there. But that’s grist for a future column.