Aeration Day

It's one of my least favorite occurances of the year, the day the groundskeepers come around with their handy little aerators and punch the hell out of the soil. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to aerating (what an easy life that would be if aeration was all I had to worry about. Forget the fact that millions of Americans have zero health insurance, that corporations like Wal-Mart are diminishing the American Dream or that the polar bears are dying because the permafrost and arctic ice-caps are melting, it's lawn management that really lights a fire under my ass!), it's that I have spent all winter successfully dodging goose crap and have only just begun to let my guard down now that the weather has cleared up somewhat and the geese have decided to take their slimy green Tootsie Rolls elsewhere. And then today I come home and discover every square inch of lawn around my home covered in ground-turds which look exactly like the very thing I've been dodging for four months. And there's that little yip-yip dog in the next building whose owners refuse to clean up after it, like they want to share with the world the leavings of their fluffy friend, which also look remarkably like the fresh little dirt plugs which have suddenly littered our lawns. I mean, how is one supposed to tread? Do you just assume every piece and pellet is dislodged dirt and march merrily along? And what happens when it's not? It's not like I own a hose or anything! In an apartment why would I need one? And what do I do about my dog, who insists upon investigating every single little nugget to inspect it for nutritional value? Just getting from the door to the edge of the parking lot has turned into an unending task.I fully support the promotion of proper root structure in the grass but this is a bit unnerving! Duncan certainly enjoys it but I, for one, think there should be an easier, more sightly way to handle the matter. In this day and age you'd think someone would've invented a sort of dirt mulcher––something similar to what happens when we mow––that would scatter the bounty of all that sprocket-induced turdifying of the grass into a nice little powder. There's a freebie for whoever wants it.

Now stop reading and get busy engineering this miracle of modern lawn maintenance!

Image courtesy of Google images