Attribution

When I finally got around to mowing the lawn this past Sunday, I noticed a problem.  My lawn was getting torn up.  There were clods of grass that had been ripped out of the ground, as if a golfer had launched a shot from the fairway.  I attributed this to the groundhog, because my dad had similar problems with a groundhog in his yard.

But then I kept mowing.  I noticed that even though it was after 5 pm, and it hadn’t rained since early in the morning, the soil was still wet.  As I pivoted the lawnmower to turn it around, I saw the REAL problem...me.   I was pivoting the mower too slowly and it was ripping into the grass.  It wasn’t the groundhog’s fault, and it wasn’t the lawnmower’s fault.  It was my fault.  Problem solved.

So here’s my first yard maintenance top tip: Be gentle on the grass.