Just finished part of my annual Exercise in Futility -- the perennial reseeding of the strip of lawn in front of our house between the sidewalk and the street.
This would probably not be a once-a-year project if we (1) watered the shadeless strip once in a while or (2) filled the space instead with some sort of ground cover that survives drought, neglect and, in winter, a cover of salty, dirty snow.
We did neither. So the dry, hot summer left the lawn looking like hay.
My son David helped rake up the dregs, and this morning after I spread the seed-starting fertilizer and seeds from a bag with the words "sunny" in yellow.
Now it looks like rain. I'm hoping for enough to keep the sensitive seeds moist, but not so much that the seeds are washed into the gutter.
I called Allerdice to ask what I ought to put on top of the newly seeded dirt to keep the seeds in place. An as-usual friendly and helpful man at the store said that he uses a roller, but it also works just to tromp all over the dirt in my sneakers.
"It won't hurt the seeds," he assured me."I've been doing it for years."
Hmmm. OK. But if he's so good at growing lawns, why does he have to keep doing it?