Sweet Sand

Here's a new one for you...

The grass in our front yard has never been great, but it's only gone from bad to way, way worse. It started out last summer with some bare spots and a bit of crab grass here and there. Having just relocated our family across the ocean into a completely foreign land, the grass situation was the least of our worries. Now that we are settled in, even to the point that we finally got the interior of the house painted, we had some brickwork done and took notice of the grass again. Or should I say, lack of grass...it was completely overrun with crab grass and looked horrible. Our neighbors on both sides have beautiful lawns with real grass - I don't know what happened to ours. TruGreen Lawn care doesn't service this area, and we've always been a bit helpless without their magic fertilizers and weedkillers.

After a quick call, a supervisor from the gardening department came out and agreed to replace the grass. Workers arrived the next day with shovels to remove all the crabgrass and what little of the real grass was left. Then they gave the tree a thorough thinning so that the grass would have less shade. What happened next was fascinating ...they came back later with a dump truck full of SAND and spread it out. Not just any sand...Sweet Sand. I guess it's the Middle Eastern version of top soil? It has been enriched with the nutrients that growing grass apparently needs in this area.


The day after the sand was spread, I fully expected them to come by with some seeds, or if we were really lucky, sod. Again, I was surprised to see this big green pile of what looked like plucked up grass. A bit later, the gardeners came back and lovingly (?) planted each grass plug into our yard. I guess when labor is cheap it's an acceptable way of replanting a lawn.



So now this is what our lawn looks like. We TOTALLY didn't think the situation through completely, or we would have waited until October or November to request it. We've been running the sprinkler from sunrise to sunset, moving it every hour or so. Keeping in the mind that the daytime highs the last couple days have been 118F+, you can understand why. The locals tell us that with some diligence it will be fine in the long run.



Our neighbor's lawn, pictured on the right, is what we are hoping to achieve. They also have a gardener that comes once a day to look after things for them. Maybe he'll cut us a deal?

Wish us luck...with my brown thumb we'll definitely need it. I'll post a picture next spring so you can see how we did.