Grass drives me crazy

Brown patches of dirt (OK, that’s redundant because you seldom see green patches of dirt) should know their environment, their context, their place. They have no business acting like churlish interlopers and squatting where grass once grew in my lawn.

But those patches of dirt speckle my lawn every spring. I imagine it’s some sort of rite of spring, but I consider it to be a wrong of spring.

So, every spring I plant grass to fill in the bare spots. I throttle breath back into those splotches -- all the while knowing that even when the seed sprouts, the demon will be only staggered, not slain. New bare spots will pop up next year to hang out in tandem with the dandelions.

Of course, growing grass can be a tad tedious when Mother Nature turns off the water spigot. I swear every spring we suffer a drought for a couple weeks immediately after I plant grass.

Since it seems to rain about 99.999 percent of the time this year, I wonder if we will be afflicted with a drought as soon as I plant grass in May.

If past is prologue, rain will stay away from my lawn like a scared school of fish. The fountain of flow will be drier than highbrow British humor.

I have spent too many springs when my constant comrade has been my garden hose, snaking it around throughout my expansive yard, soaking dirt that is ravenously thirsty. You can tell when the ground is dehydrated because the slightest breeze triggers rooster tails of dirt.

It is amazing that how quickly ground can become dehydrated. I guess it never got over Noah’s Biblical flood not lasting for eternity.

The only saving grace about yard work is that when we go to work, our mind does not. So, I stand there watching staccato bursts pulsate from my garden hose while random thoughts ricochet through my idle mind.

One thought routinely catches fire inside my mind and ambushes me while I water. It’s a question that gnaws at my insides until my ribs develop tiny stress fractures.

Why is it that grass slashes, whirls and explodes religiously and incessantly into flower beds, but never, ever will dare venture into the sovereign space of a bare spot in the lawn?

Even if you keep a bare spot of dirt loose and moist, as I have done in multiple failed attempts to outwit Mother Nature, grass cowers and stays away as if the patch were surrounded by a moat of alligators, barbed wire and an electrical fence.

Suffice it to say, I find this dichotomy to be preposterously cruel. So, I’m venting about it in this column. It’s my only recourse, considering that I can’t verbalize it. You see, my righteous indignation is so acute that it’s a physical impossibility to work the words up my throat.