My Yard, the Wildlife Habitat

The downpour continues here in lovely Nebraska, washing away my hopes of having something other than dirt, mud and weeds surrounding my house. I think I may just turn it into a wildlife habitat and live off of EPA or Fish and Wildlife Service grants.

So we bought this new-construction house two or three months ago and figured we'd save money by seeding the lawn instead of sodding. Wrong. The day after the contractor seeded, Mother Nature decided to oh-so-temporarily lift her three-year Nebraska water restriction with three days of drenching storms. We found the straw we'd laid over the yard blocks away at the entrance to our subdivision.

Months of waist-high weeds and disapproving stares from our neighbors later, we called the sod guys. No one returned our calls. We called again and got a nice guy from Nebraska Sod to come out on a Sunday. He reassured us all would be green and groovy Real Soon Now. Indeed, we arrived home from work Monday to find the yard had already been scraped of weeds and graded. Things are looking up, we thought.

The next day, horticultural history repeated itself. The weeds now have a second chance at life, the graded dirt is washing away, and the sod fields are too waterlogged for harvesting. We don't even bother thinking about how nice it would have been to have the sod in before the rain started, thus saving us the constant watering needed to establish a new lawn.

Ah, homeownership. When everything's measured in multiples of $1,000, living under the thumb of a loony landlord looks awfully appealing.