My Lawn and Leadership Part 2 – Lawn Rehab

The first house my wife and I bought didn’t have much of a lawn. The coverage of the dry, long bluegrass/rye grass mix was thin throughout proving its lack of proper care, but then again it was early spring. Obviously we didn’t buy the house for the lawn. My younger brother, Jon, was working for a lawn company at the time. I had him come over and check it out. He agreed that it needed a lot of work. We felt that if we did the right things we could produce a turf most neighbors would love to own.

The first order of business was to do some seeding.  There were multiple large bare spots in the back yard. The largest was a 6 foot by 2 ½ foot rectangle which obviously was the former location of a play structure or outdoor storage box.  I thought we would just throw some seeds down and start watering.  I was wrong.  Jon showed me that I needed to “disturb the ground” by pulling the weeds and any weak-looking grass to make it a cultivated mix of dirt and air.  We then sewed the seed in with a garden rake moving it continuously over and through the ground as if we were folding an enormous blanket until it looked like a beautiful marriage of rich soil and tiny seeds.  I know I’m a bit of a freak, but I was overwhelmed at the potential of that rectangle.  Could it really grow in as thick as we hoped?  I watered it for 5 minutes and then went and replicated the same process over the next few bare spots.

Jon stopped by and dropped some starter fertilizer a couple days later, and I continued to water the spots at night after dinner wondering if it would actually work.  Sure enough, about 10 days after the initial planting I started to see tiny, focused blades of grass fighting for the Sun. It was working!

The next 3-4 weeks more and more blades began to push through the soil until finally the bare spots were replaced by thick, brilliant, kelly green patches of grass.

Part two was killing the weeds. Jon took care of that with his weed death serum. Thanks bro!

By the end of the growing season the lawn looked like that obnoxious green lawn on a certain fertilizer company’s tv commercial.  Maybe it’s just me, but every time I see that commercial I question the legitimacy of the turf.  I swear it is computer generated.  That summer Jon and I rehabilitated my lawn. It was not easy and it took time, energy and focus, but the end result was magnificent. Do you ever look at the line where your lawn meets your neighbors’ and quietly celebrate your victory because yours looks so much better than theirs? I know…I’m sick.

Have you ever undertaken an opportunity where the landscape of your business, church, or team resembled the original state of my lawn? Was it bare, uninspired, and underachieving? I did. Check out my next blog entry for the rest of the story.