SHORT STORY
HOW TO CARE FOR GRASS,
TREES AND SHRUBS
Today the subject is “Grass.” This subject you’ll be able to
easily understand. Properly done, taking care of your grass involves little
time or money.
DON’T’S
*You don’t need to buy fertilizer because enough Nitrogen
(N2), which is the element that makes grass green, comes from rain in most
areas of the United States. *You don’t need to aerate. Instead let the night
crawlers do the aerating. *You don’t need to water too often. This forces roots
of the grass to grows long and strong in search of water
It saves money, time and stress by not fertilizing,
sprinkling crab grass additives, hiring people, storage costs, buying
equipment, transportation costs, aerating so and so forth. If you do, I mean
don’t do any of these things your lawn will look professionally taken care of.
Course, a bazillion people who make money selling you this stuff such as John
Deere, Caterpillar, garden suppliers, politicians, newspaper advertisers, and
so on, prefer you not to think this way.
DO’S
Oh, you'll need a lawn mower. The type of lawn mower most
people prefer has the horizontal circular blade. *Do set the cutter bar about
four inches off of the ground. The reason is if the grass is allowed to grow
about four inches tall, and you won't have dandelions and other weeds to
contend with. *Cut and water only as needed. Let the cuttings mulch the lawn.
Next let’s talk about weed eaters. I’m reminded of this
subject as I am watching the yard care crew that is cutting the grass at my
condo, while I write. They are killing the trees with their weed eaters. They
are, cutting the bark off the base of the trees at the same time as they cut
the grass around the trees. The younger the tree the more the damage and the
more likely to slow the growth or in a worst case scenario the death of the
tree, especially in a dry year. No shade for the tenants and home owners. The
big surprise is the federal government gives green money to weed eater users to
do all this killing.
The Weed Eater was invented by a man by the name of George
Ballas. He got his big idea after a poisonous snake bit a worker who was
trimming his lawn with shears. In 1975 George showed off his Weed Eater, a
popcorn can rigged up with some wires. It made a helluva noise. He died last
Saturday or maybe it was Sunday at age the age of eighty-five. He was a dance instructor, developer, and inventor and
marketer who built hotels, patented an adjustable table and marketed an early
portable phone. But it was the Weed Eater—of which he invented both the concept
and the name that made him a fortune while sparking a revolution in lawn care. He introduced the device in the early 1970 and by 1976
was selling $50 million dollars’ worth of them annually. The son of Greek
immigrants who ran a restaurant in northern Louisiana, Mr. Ballas served in the
Air Force during World War II and the Korean War. After getting out of the
service, he married Maria Louisa Marulanda, a dance instructor whom he met when
she taught him the tango. She had appeared in films, including the 1949 western
"Rio Grande,” and the couple went on to give performances together. Mr.
Ballas went into the dance business, managing several Arthur Murray and Fred
Astaire studios. His son, Corky Ballas, became a professional dancer, and his
grandson, Mark Ballas, has appeared on seven seasons of "Dancing with the
Stars," including partnering with Bristol Palin in season eleven. In the
late 1960s, George opened “Dance City USA” in an unused cinema in Houston,
boasting that the 43,000-square-foot dance studio was the largest in the world.
He called it a supermarket of babes, booze and big bands all under one roof.
With his lawn
business thriving, Mr. Ballas wanted his lawn—all three acres of it—to look
good. His search for an alternative to time- and labor-intensive shears gained
urgency when a worker he had hired was hospitalized after being bitten by a
copperhead. Mr. Ballas said the idea for the Weed Eater came to him while he
was in a car wash, contemplating the big rotating bristles that cleaned
hard-to-reach corners yet somehow didn't scratch the finish. Drawing from that
inspiration, he rigged up an old popcorn can with some wires and hooked it to a
rotating edger, and the first string trimmer was born, but it ripped up the
turf and tore away the grass," Mr. Ballas told the New York Times in 1977.
He hired an engineer to design new models that substituted monofilament fishing
line for wire and ran on electricity and gas. He dubbed it "Weed
Eater" and held several patents on it. When Mr. Ballas failed to find a
company interested in distributing the device, he decided to sell it himself.
He gave each new model a pet name—the first was a "Weedie" and the
second a "Clippie"—and designed logos for each based on portraits of
his children with unruly, grass-like hair. He used a high-visibility ad
campaign, including spots on the Super Bowl and a sponsorship role in the 1977
David Frost interviews of former President Richard Nixon. In 1977, Mr. Ballas
sold Weed Eater Inc. to Emerson Electric Co. for an undisclosed sum that his
daughter, Winnie Jamaal, called a largely fortune. Mr. Ballas also taught entrepreneurship
at Rice University in Houston. He continued to tinker with new inventions, and
at one point marketed football-helmet-sized portable phone that found few
takers.
Any questions
you can email me, ask the yard and garden “We Can Help” section of Home Depot,
or Abigail Van Buren.
