Cheating is ruining the lawn-care game
11:22 AM Fri, Jul 20, 2007 | Permalink
Email
 |
 |
Projo Offbeat Blog |
|
My son Joey visited Fenway Park recently and returned with a question I had trouble answering. After all, how do you explain to an 8-year-old kid the unfair advantages brought about by chemicals and loads of money? Do you risk tearing down his heroes? Or worse, do you leave him with the impression that his father is a bitter wannabe? My son and I have played ball in our back yard, so when he toured Fenway, he quickly realized that his father couldn't measure up to the product displayed between Fenway's grandstands. "Dad, they play on that grass all the time, so why does it look so much better than our lawn?" he asked. 
AP file photoGround crew members take to the field last year to prepare Fenway's manicured diamond and greens.
They hire guys who, unlike me, actually paid attention during their high school chemistry classes to ensure the Fenway lawn is getting just the right amount of nitrogen, potassium and water. How can the average guy compete with those Major Leaguers? Sure, I throw down fertilizer every now and then, but my lawn treatment and theirs is like the difference between vitamins and steroids. It wouldn't be so bad if the cheating was limited to Fenway Park, but it's spread like a weed all over my neighborhood, and, I suspect, all over neighborhoods throughout New England and beyond. (It's apparently a problem overseas, too. Check out this story from a Web site in London, where neigbors accuse each other of cheating in a best-kept-estate contest.) Let's face it. Homeowners everywhere compete over the look of their lawns. We might not talk about it, but we do, silently measuring our lawns against the neighbors' as we drive down the street. The problem is, there are fewer and fewer honest competitors. It seems like only the proud (or cheap?) traditionalists still care for their lawn the old-fashioned way, cutting the grass on Saturday afternoon, dragging the sprinkler out when the grass starts turning brown, maybe spreading fertilizer a couple of times a year. Now it seems that every other lawn owner has built-in sprinklers and expensive lawn services to ensure their lawns also have just the right amount of nitrogen and potassium, just like Fenway's. The cheaters often try to hide it. They set the sprinklers to trigger automatically at 5 or 6 a.m., when they think the rest of us are asleep. And the professional lawn care guys sneak onto their lawns in the middle of the week, when the rest of us are at work. But the evidence is there for everyone to see in the thick grass bulging from the lawn and threatening to burst across the driveway and walkway. Believe me. My son notices those lawns, too. But how do I explain that those homeowners aren't playing fair and that perhaps they should have big asterisks in their yards to let the world know they're not? 
CommentsLeave a comment |
New comments
New photos
Authors
New posts
Projo blogs
Archives
No wonder fire flys are all but gone. Just let the rain water your lawn and keep the chemicals off. Kids and pets take that stuff in. When it's brown, so's everyones. Leave Fenway alone. It's a shrine, as it should be. A lawn is just that a lawn.
Report Abuse
In RI, all the runoff from these heavily fertalized lawns ends up in the bay and contributes to the problems with the health of the bay.
Report Abuse
Cheaters are helping to destroy the environment with all that stuff they put on their lawns. Better to have a more natural yard, see the National Wildlife Federation's Make Your Yard A Wildlife Habitat program.
Report Abuse
The reason that people are watering their lawns at 5am or 6am is because at that point in the morning the sun is not out and therefore will not evaporate the water. I mean - I don't think it takes someone with a high school degree to figure that one out.
Report Abuse
You are SOOOOOOO right!
Report Abuse