Tackling a hilly dilemma
It’s not often that the farmer recruits me for outdoor physical labor, but when he does I leap right in with the sleeve-up-rolling gusto of a pioneer wife.
Such was my energetic optimism on Mother’s Day when we drove our prairie schooner over to our rental property to plant grass on a hillside. Being steep, the hillside could not hold onto its dirt, and with every rain it poured itself onto the newly paved driveway. Grass would stop the erosion, and after conjuring the best way to keep the grass seed on the hillside long enough to let it sprout, the farmer settled on rolled sheets of mulch with the seeds attached to it. Simply apply the sheets to the ground, water it down, and watch Mother Nature do her thing.
The farmer would stand at the top of the hill and send the bolt of seed fabric down to me, where I would catch and hold it while he hosed it into place. This approach had smartly factored in the wind, which was forecast to be less of a problem that day than others that week.
But a sheet of grass seed is no match for even a slight puff of wind, as we were about to find out. That sky-blue seed fabric had the strength and resiliency of a roll of toilet paper, and not the good two-ply Charmin kind. Unfurled down the hill, this stuff was as flimsy and thin as the off-brand TP you buy at the dollar store because that’s how desperate you are.
OK, so there he is at the top and there I am at the bottom, and we’ve rolled two lanes and are feeling pretty clever and then, as I hold the hem of the third strip and as the farmer reaches for the hose, a gust of wind arrives from the west, lifting the edge of the fabric into a parachute. While still holding onto the hem, I fling myself up and onto the hillside in a futile attempt to push the fabric back to earth with my body. By then, the farmer has captured the hose and is dousing the hillside and also me. Clawing at the earth like a mountain goat, I grab at the fabric, which is no longer a cohesive sheet but wads of wet blue mush.
I slide back down to the driveway; upon landing on the new pavement, my mud-clumped sneakers have become skis and I keep on sliding, finally coming to a stop when I hit the mailbox pole. I waddle back up the driveway to start lane four.
That big new roll of fabric came at me like a bowling ball, kneecapping me but good. My instinct was to yell at the farmer for not warning me it was coming, but we were angry and frustrated enough as it was. With still half of the hillside to cover, the wind was flourishing. We would have to speed things up.
I’d like to say we eventually got into a rhythm, but that would be a squishy blue fib. Between the wind, the swearing, the sodden fabric and my grappling as I tried to scale the mountain, we were an episode called “The Three Stooges Sew a Quilt.”
Still, we got most of the hillside covered. I could barely walk the next day, having used muscles that had gone AWOL for years. The farmer goes over there every day to water it. He said it looked like deer walked through it and did some damage.
So far there’s no sign of new grass, but we have hope.