You Durn Kids! Get Off My Lawn!

We I got home from picking up the car from the shop last night, I finally got up the motivation to work on the bald spot in the front lawn. Because we live next to the community's playground, kids use our yard as a shortcut to get there. You know, rather than walking the extra five feet to the path designed for it. Durn lazy kids! Anyway, it's been growing bigger every year. This year, I resolved to fix it. A couple of weeks ago when Jon and I were shopping for his new mower, I picked up a few items to fix the problem, and keep those durn kids off my lawn.

1 bag of grass seed/fertilizer combo
1 roll of biodegradable grass cover
2 bags of biodegradable grass cover stakes (Mmmm, steaks. No! stakes.)
6 yard stakes
1 spool of green yard twine

I had to rough up the bald spot with my lawn rake. What? It deserved roughing up! It was looking at me funny. Besides, that breaks up the scads of clay we have in our soil to help the grass seed find purchase.

I then emptied the whole bag on the bald spot, as well as a big patch of dead grass a few feet away that was new this year. I had hoped the bag would be enough to fix the shady spot under our tree on the other side of the stairs, but I'm not even sure I got down enough in the bald spot as it is. I'll be heading back to get more before long. After all, it's "guaranteed to grow anywhere!" They even had a picture of it growing on cement. I'll believe that when I see my lawn come back to life.

After watering the mixture to the advised level of saturation, Stacy and I fashioned snuggly blankets for to tuck in the baby grass. Ok, so it's not snuggly. The grass cover is made from some fibrous plant material woven into a biodegradable plastic mesh and further held together by some light twine. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't make a comfortable bed spread. I have to say that the biodegradable stakes were pretty cool. I'm not sure how they work, because they seemed to be just like a non-biodegradable plastic stake.

Lastly, I plunged the yard stakes as far as they would go around the perimeter and surrounded the whole thing with two levels of twine. Now, I just sit back and wait. Oh, and water. Oh yeah, and yell at those durn kids to stay off my lawn!

The large patch is the main bald spot, the smaller one is the new patch of dead grass.

If you look closely, you can probably see the twine stretching between the stakes.

Also notice the ginormous, tree-like bush in the background. It's gotta be 8'+ at this point. That's what Jon will be bringing his chainsaw down to Manassas to trim.

The twine describes the most skewed hexagon you'll find on my lawn.