Mind Your Own Grubs

“What did they do to my YARD?”

Dude.

The previous owners of our home, the ones hubby can’t stop bad mouthing, came by to visit one of the neighbors last week and complained, “What did they do to my YARD?” The neighbor promptly reported this to us. I love triangles.

What happened to the yard is the grub damage I recently mentioned. The previous owner warned us that they’d had grub  problems and the yard needed to be treated every year. OK. So, when we buy the house I call Scott’s Lawn Service and they say yeah, the neighborhood had an infestation and few years back. So, I treat for grubs for the first 3 years. Then, I notice no one has grub problems. I’m thinking, it’s not possible that every single one of my neighbors treats for grubs every year, the infestation must be over.

Not.

So, I don’t treat for grubs this year and the yard goes to hell in a hand basket. I don’t realize the problem is grubs so first I call the man who mows the lawn (let’s not forget the little joke that was my own attempt to care for my lawn with story one about the grass and the even better one – story two – about the leaves). I pretty much blame him for cutting the grass too short and causing the problem. He says with all due grace that he’s not cutting the grass too short. OK. So, I call Scott’s, they continue to fertilize our lawn. Then I blame them for the huge bald patches  all over my front and back lawn and tell them I think it’s a chemical problem. They say they’ll come take a look.

Grubs.

And only one person to blame.

We’ll have to re-seed in the spring.

But the whole point was Mr. Used-to-Own’s self-righteousness over HIS yard. I wanted to find him in the phone book and call him up to say.

“Grubs? Dude. You sold it to us with pipes backing up into the basement that cost us a grand to fix in the first month. Let’s not forget to mention the additional trip by a plumber to route the kitchen sink which was also backing up from the day we moved in. Hmmm, then, how about a kitchen where every appliance was 20 years old? A roof that needed to be torn off and replaced in two years? A 25-year-old air conditioner and a 7-year-old furnace that is so cheap we buy insurance with Applegate Heating and Cooling each year because we need at least one after-hours repair every winter? What about the basement that leaked like a sieve until we replaced the glass block window you’d left broken for years, and the gutters to boot?”

Dude? Shut up.