YACK on: Spring
Grant Sanders
It's spring on Nantucket. I can tell because instead of its being windy, spitty, overcast and cold, it's windy, spitty, overcast and not quite so cold that my grass is starting to green up ever so slightly and the flowers in the area around the house that we call "our garden" are attempting to poke up above the surface. Tulips and day lilies do not joyously burst on the scene in my yard, as they do in other less harsh climates. They seem to stick a shoot or two up - as if putting a toe in a frigid swimming spot - and then reluctantly, they make an appearance culminating sometime around June 23rd.

My friend, Angus, of Nantucket Island Tree Movers came by last spring on Mother's Day and helped me plant a flowering cherry tree in my front yard using the massive dirt and root-ball scooping truck he and his partner Frank use to move trees all around the island. The tree he plopped into a hole in front of my home was a beautiful flowering Kwanzan cherry tree I purchased from one of the island's nurseries. (I chose the Kwanzan cherry for its lovely pinkish blossoms and its shape, and because I believe in providing opportunities for trees who celebrate religious holidays other than the ones I celebrate.) So far, it's been a pretty good move, although we have yet to see any hint of blossoms on this tree in 2007. Like so many other plants in my yard, it has gone on strike until we provide it with the items on a list of demands. These include ample sunshine and warmth, a bag of unmarked mulch in small denominations, and a fueled, idling 747 at the airport, in case summer never comes and it needs to make a quick getaway to a more hospitable climate. Like Iceland. Or northern Norway. Or the dark side of Pluto.

I dread this time of year for many reasons. For one, it means that I will have to make some effort to fit into a pair of shorts soon. This will require exercise and dieting and self sacrifice, none of which I'm terribly motivated to do. Another reason I hate spring is because I have to once again face my lawn. Or, rather, that plot of open space I call a lawn but is actually a collection of disparate subspecies of native weeds growing together to provide the appearance of a lawn.

I've actually tried to classify all of the plants on my lawn. There's the plant that kind of looks like grass that only spreads out in a big clump. There's a yellowish, greenish mosslike substance that stays close to the ground and tries to fit in. There's a clumpy flat-round leafy plant. There are many ordinary dandelions. (And several who think they are somehow special.) There are spaces filled in with errant pine needles and clumps of former dead or dying plant matter that refuse to blow away. And there's a dangly, leggy yellowish flower thing that sticks up about a foot on thin stalks, and bends over when I try to cut it down with my push-reel mower, after which it just pops back up again. Actual grass accounts for only between 9 percent and 11 percent of my lawn. But I mow it once in a while anyway. It's a denial thing. The various plants on my lawn grow and pretend they are actual lawn material. And I get out the mower once in a while and pretend not to notice that several of the green things that grow there are completely bladeless.

If you stand back and squint, it does not look half bad. That's my front lawn. My back yard is another story. It's far worse.

Due to my own negligence my backyard looks like a French battlefield during World War II. Newly dug trenches and fox holes with various sites where bombs have landed and decimated everything within a certain radius. Fortunately, the two warring factions who are responsible for this devastation, me and my dog, really don't mind that much. Although the local townspeople (my wife and my kids) are waiting for war reparations and a Marshall plan that will work to restore the backyard to its pre-war condition.

I'm not sure this is possible. As my dog and I continue to play fetch in the backyard, the trenches just seem to get deeper and muddier. You can't plant grass in areas that are constantly being aerated by big, dopy paws running at full speed.

Another problem, pardon the expression, is poo. I've found that as I continue to feed my dog, he continues to manufacture the stuff and no matter how much fecal matter I pick up and dispose of, it ends up finding its way back to the lawn anyway. This makes a barefoot stroll across the lawn in summer a risky proposition. My wife has begged me to stay ahead of the poo curve by picking it up daily, but I have found that the task is far more satisfying when the results can be measured in wheelbarrows as opposed to shovelsful. (Now there's a sense of accomplishment!)

Now that I have broken down and purchased an actual gas-powered lawn mower to use instead of my old reeltype human-powered model, cleaning up after the dog is an imperative. Nothing is worse that discovering a hidden bomb site using blades rotating at 33,000 rpm. Especially if you are a bystander. Talk about collateral damage.

So I guess it's that time of year. Time I found my cruddy old grassstained boots and my garden gloves and my loppers and knee pads and trowels and we make an attempt at beautification. I'll do it. But I won't like it.

Secretly, I'll be yearning for that time in mid-summer when the sun gets so hot that everything turns a dull brown and stops growing and I can put my mower on the porch and not touch it for another 10 months.

YACK on. I

Grant Sanders is the host of YACK, the Nantucket Online Community at yackon.com and he notes that the home and garden forum there has not been used in some time. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of The Nantucket Independent. Or his wife.