What's Going on in Your Yard?

Amazing and possibly apocryphal things are happening in your yard. Things that might surprise you are taking place under your very feet. Or, perhaps not so surprising if you have an advanced degree in plant physiology or agrarian psychology.

Read onward if you have a place in your heart for your lawn and for what's going on in your yard. Hopefully that place is well watered and receives morning sun.

Green grass competes with nasty weedy plants for precious resources. The grass knows it's your favorite; all the other plants resent the way that the grass is carefully mowed and fed by Human Masters. When the sun goes down, mean and prickly anti-grass gangs roam the yard, harassing the lovely green shoots of Turf Fescue. In the morning, the grass is often wet from crying all night. Relentless teasing really damages its' self-esteem.

Never set your lawn mower to cut more than 1/3 of the grass height. This general rule is not meant to be taken literally; it'd take forever to get all the blades trimmed properly.

Immense colonies of ants build elaborate civilizations in your yard. Barely beneath the unhappy layer of grass are highly organized cadres of ants with the sole goal of getting into your house. The small work of each ant contributes to the well-being of the colony, like UC Berkley professors. Well, one of them wants in your house (the ants, not the profs). Which one in particular matters not to them. They consider their Summer successful when they get one ant invader into your kitchen. Greeting their peer when it returns to the ant-hive is an unexpected bonus. The entire ant nation gladly sacrifices everything just to make it possible for one fellow ant colonist to breach the kitchen defenses. Actually it's pretty easy for them because an ant can squeeze through any little opening and you can't possibly plug them all.

Trees can rarely be trusted. One day a tree will invite happy songbirds to build homes. The yard fills with the relaxing sounds of pooping and nesting birds. Then, without warning, the same tree drops all its' leaves onto the distressed Turf Fescue. Struggling bird families are exposed to every raptor in the neighborhood. This disturbing pattern repeats annually.

Perhaps you do not even want to know what the grubs are up to.

However, the grubs would like to know. Poor buggers can't stop hiding from the moles long enough to get organized. As it turns out, a critical mass of grubby characters has roughly the same capacity for rational thought as the average post-doc at UC Berkley. For better or worse, the post-docs are above ground and don't have the mole threat dogging them. On the other hand, it's good to have some useful function in life.