Grass and Sass

It baffles me. We give it attention over the years and it gives us nothing, only a blank stare. In the tiniest plot of Mayberry, an irregular shaped spot lives like a soil cancer near our bushes, no grass will grow. Not even clover.

I don’t lose sleep over it. It’s not critical, but I wonder why it remains. Have shrub roots stolen the soil nutrients? Too many terrier pee mails? Did a meteorite scorch the earth before we lived here? Who knows.

I notice it more in the summer as we play with the dogs. Better contrast I suppose. While outside, our wire-coated General Grant seeks cover in the shade to nap, but Matilda not so much. She never rests. Perpetually in motion, making rounds of the yard as the sole member of the Mayberry K-9. She barks away invaders. Deer fear her and I lost my lilies only when Tilly was at camp (aka the kennel) while we hit the beach. Our flowerbeds turned into a petal smorgasbord to those roaming woodland jumpers.

Tilly takes no prisoners by the boxwoods. Her intensity emerges in her footfalls as she runs back and forth and back again in the boiling hot afternoons Small clouds of dirt follow in her terrierstream. Any blades of grass will perish under this creature. She favors the sloped section of our yard. It takes years for hiking trails to emerge naturally on hillsides, but it takes only a few weeks for Tilly to make her mark, one paw print at a time over her patrol line. I call her beat the Tilly Trail.

I’m not worried about this dead grass either. In ten years when we build a deck, the Tilly Trail will be gone forever. Catch it while you can.

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