When Your Lawn is Burning

lawn care tips and summer with kids ☀️

Last summer, I let our lawn die. It wasn’t intentional, and I didn’t even realize it was happening until it was too late.

Mowing the lawn is one of my favorite summer activities. Now, I might feel different if it were a push mower, and I was sweating my face off for several hours while mowing our large yard. But there’s something relaxing about the whir of the motor, blocking out all the sounds of my life for an hour.¹ 

I mowed the lawn once a week at the beginning of last summer. Like clockwork, the blades of grass grew tall, and I would tell the kids, “I’m going to mow! Don’t come outside!”

I’d put in my AirPods, queue up a podcast or an audiobook, and fire up the engine. For an hour, no one asked me for a snack or to do anything for them, and I could see my finished work behind me—the straight lines cut by the sharp blades as I made laps around the yard.

When I finished mowing, I’d jump off the mower, brushing the dirt and grass stuck to my sunscreen-coated legs. I’d look back at the yard, feeling proud, my work visible. Then, I would go into the house and take a shower. You know those showers you take after a hard workout or when you’re really dirty? The showers you take when you really need one feel the most satisfying to me.

Sometime in mid-July, the yard started to turn brown, the edges wilting under the sun, and the days between needing to mow grew longer and longer. And yet, I didn’t do anything about it. 

In June, Rich moved the sprinklers around the yard from place to place—soaking each spot in the yard. And we would catch the occasional rain, too. The grass stayed green and soft under my bare feet. But then, once harvest began in July, Rich wasn’t home much. 

There’s an unspoken shift in the summer where everything at home becomes my responsibility. And yet, for some reason, it never dawned on me to turn the sprinklers on. Maybe I was waiting for it to rain, or I thought Rich wanted to conserve water. Yet, I never asked him. And I didn’t think to turn the sprinklers on myself. It sounds dumb to say that out loud, and still, I’m not sure why I didn’t just do it. 

Later, when harvest was over and the lawn was completely toast, Rich asked me, “Why didn’t you water the lawn?” He didn’t accuse me or point fingers; he was genuinely curious. 

I shrugged, “I don’t know.” 

Summer feels like a magnifying glass on my motherhood. After months of parenting the kids in smaller chunks of time and not having all of them together, summer feels like the sun beating down through a magnifying glass, frying the ant on the sidewalk. It’s me; I’m the ant. 

With my older kids in school full-time, it’s often just Nora and me at home. She’s used to getting to do what she wants; she doesn’t have to share her toys, snacks, or my time. And now, all three of them are at home, vying for the remote, who gets to pick what we do and share me. And often, they’re missing their dad, which they, in turn, take out on me.

Each summer, I aim to focus on my relationships with each kid. I want to give them more of me, especially my big kids, who spend the school year away from home. But yet, I rarely do anything about it. I just hope that it magically happens—that all of a sudden, I’ll be more intentional as a parent. I assume our special time together has to be something big, like going to a movie or taking them to dinner. And it’s not easy to get away with just one kid, the hour drive each way to town makes it a full day event, not something I can easily do three times a month all summer. 

So, I cross my fingers and hope and pray that they get along and don’t fight during our countless hours together at home. And then, when they do fight, I automatically feel like a horrible mother, like my kids are the only ones who fight. I imagine my house is the loudest, the most chaotic. I picture all the other homes in the summer as quiet, with the kids getting along and braiding each other’s hair.²  

//

As I sit at my kitchen table writing this, the sprinkler runs in the front yard. I hear the gentle ch ch ch of the water coming from the nozzle and the rhythmic sound of the stream hitting the house as it goes by. The sprinkler isn’t where I started it yesterday afternoon. Rich moved it early this morning before he headed out for the day. But soon, I know he won’t be home to move the sprinkler or to turn it off or on. 

Last month, he ordered two hose reels—one for the front yard and one for the back. He knows I struggle with winding up the hoses (why is it so hard?), and if I’m left to my own devices, the hoses just end up in knotted-up wads in the yard.³ I didn’t ask for the hose reels, and we haven’t talked about last summer and how the lawn died. 

Sometimes, the long days of summer light make me feel seen the least. In the winter, the shorter hours feel comforting, bringing us into the house together each evening. But during the summer, Rich’s work schedule often matches the sun. He’s gone before I get up and returns when I’m asleep. We chat occasionally via text if he has cell service, but sometimes, we go days without a real conversation.

But each time I go out into the yard, pulling the red hoses through the reels, I feel seen, even though I haven’t seen him yet today.

If I want to keep mowing the yard through August, I’ll have to water it. The old saying goes that the grass is greener on the other side. But it’s also true that the grass is greener where you water it. I can’t wait for someone else to notice my lawn is burning up.

I guess I’m saying that maybe I can’t holler from the kitchen, “Stop fighting!” and expect the kids to get along. But maybe I can toss them into the front yard and turn the sprinkler on while I sit in a lawn chair, letting them splash me.

I’ll report back in August.

1. Ladies, if your husband willingly jumps at any chance to mow the lawn, you should ask yourself why you aren’t the one doing it. He’s onto something. Just try it.

2. Okay, even that might be a stretch. And if your kids do this, don’t tell me.

3. Also, maybe this is why I stopped watering. The hoses were a disaster, and I just got frustrated and walked away.