Look, I'm a 35 year old, business owner and father of two. Girl is 5, boy is 3. It is inevitable at some point my attention will be garnered by one or both of these things, golf and/or lawn. Fortunately, for my marriages sake giving my lawn attention can be somewhat passed off as "doing stuff around the house" as opposed to me spending 5 hours shanking slices into Secret Harbour backyards, but I digress. As a gym owner I've come to recognise that gardening and fitness have a lot of similarities. Allow me to elaborate on a few; It takes patience: I put fertiliser on my lawn, once, a month ago and expected it to be sorted. Just like fitness it can take months (maybe even years) to see the results we want. We can't expect to see results for the work we haven't done and just like supplements I want to keep chucking all sorts of products on my lawn every week. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Slow diligent attention over time is really what does the trick. Seasol good, more seasol not always gooder.
Everyone is an expert; I stupidly joined a couple of Facebook Lawn pages and suddenly I was inundated with a cacophony of advice from every Tom, Dick & Harry about what products to use, when to use them, what they used, and so on and so forth. Typically, and just like fitness it boiled down to 4 major and very simple things; make sure it's getting water, use a fertilizer, use a wetting agent, have a decent mower. Kind of like; balance your calories, workout hard a few times per week, sleep well, eat a broad nutritious diet. Comparison sucks; Those same Facebook pages were often full of pictures of absolutely immaculate lawns and gardens, making mine seem like a bomb site. I instantly felt inferior, why was my lawn patchy, is it my retic, should I start over? Sad reacts only. Luckily I remembered I probably bench more than them and have a quicker 5km time, which made me feel better, but it didn't fix my lawn. You have to play the hand you're dealt; When we don't make gardening or fitness a priority we have to deal with the consequences of our actions. Some of us might inherit shithouse landscapes and/or poor genetics or be the victim of an unfavourable environment that impacts our health or our lawns. I don't want to run the analogies to deep but there is always something we can do for our fitness and our garden. Unfortunately some of us simply aren't as blessed. Anyway, I bought some more plants this weekend for our little corner area, not sure if it's going to be an outdoor shower or fire pit area. I also planted some carrots, so fingers crossed I can actually produce some veges. Anyway, let's talk lawns (& fitness) soon, Ta for reading. AJ