Rained all day yesterday and most of the night before. Ground this afternoon was still dark and soft and the grass came up wet on the boots, which is the whole reason today happened at all.
There is a thin spot in the front yard, out where the gravel turns around. Hard-packed from everybody who has ever backed a truck up to the garage, and it has been bare four years running. Every fall it goes on the list. Most falls it stays there.
The seeding window in this valley runs about ten days. Ground still holding summer heat, air already giving it up at night, enough runway for roots to take before the first hard frost gets down here. Go early and it cooks. Go late and you have thrown good seed on dirt that is done cooperating.
Nobody I work for can see that window. That is what they are buying. They think it is the labor, and the labor is the easy part, honestly. Anybody can push a spreader. What I get paid for is knowing which ten days, and the only way I know is that I have been wrong enough times to stop guessing.
Raked the patch first. You have to open the ground up before anything will take, and it always looks like damage while you are doing it. Sarah came out on the step with coffee and asked why I was tearing up the yard. Fair question. It looked like I was tearing up the yard.
Two passes with the spreader, crossed at right angles, walking slower than feels right. Then straw over the top of it, thin enough to still see dirt through. Crank slept through all of it on the step. The duck came over and worked the fresh dirt for about twenty minutes, which I have decided not to think about.
And then there is nothing to do. That is the part of this job I have never gotten used to. You do the work right, on the right day, in the right ground, and then you walk away and look at bare dirt for three weeks with no way to know.
The rest of it is weather. Rain when it needs it or not. Cold early or cold on time. I do not get a say in any of that, and neither does anybody who hands me a check.
Four years that spot has been on the list. Went and stood out there again before supper. Still just dirt and straw.
Ask me in October.