My Lawn project - Part 2

Yesterday, I wrote about how I did up my lawn initially and how it finally dried up.

For a long time, there was a small patch of grass, dried up, almost anemic, that remained to one side of the lawn. Every morning as I sipped my steaming hot cup of Darjeeling tea, I would look sadly, helplessly at the lawn and wonder when I would do it up again.

At one point, I almost committed a blunder. I almost decided to cover the area with stone. "Limestone!", my granite expert brother suggested. We actually went to a shop and selected the stone, fixed up the price and asked them to send the marker to measure the area. Luckily, the marker never bothered to show up and I never bothered to follow up. My heart was wedded to the lawn.

A few days back, in an extraordinary moment of determination, I pulled up justdial.com and keyed in "carpet grass" for my city. A bunch of numbers were sent to my mobile number and email address in a second. I called  couple of them, picked one that seemed most professional, checked the price and asked him to send 120 square feet of carpet grass. I asked him to send a variety that did not need sunlight. He said that would be shade grass and would come in a sack and they would need to plant the blades and we would need to wait for 45 days.

Nooooooooo..... not again!

I asked him to send the carpet grass. If the parts of the lawn that did not receive sun light dried up, I could always order a few blocks of the carpet grass and replace those areas, I reasoned to myself. All this happened on a Friday. I asked him to have this done on Sunday. I would be at home. I could supervise this myself.

The grass arrived Saturday evening. I was excited. I also ordered the other things that would be needed - vermi compost and neem cake.

Sunday came. 9:30 a.m. No sign of the maali. I called him. He said there was a strike and they would not come! I asked him why he did not inform me that he was not planning to come. He did not understand that question! Inform? For what?

I let it rest. Monday it would be.

After a couple of phone calls on Monday morning, the maistry arrived with a maali and maalin in tow. He asked me to get a trolley of red sand. I had that arranged. The maistry gave instructions to the team on what had to be done and left. The duo got to work. First they cleaned the area thoroughly and removed the old patch of grass. They also cut the lower branches of the palms so that light could enter the area.

Then they started laying the grass, one slab at a time. Each slab measured 2 feet by 1 foot.

Here is the finished lawn. The lines that you see between slabs should gradually disappear.

This is a shot of the lawn from inside.

Overall, I am very happy with the lawn. The maistry sort of dampened my enthusiasm a bit by asking me not to step on it for a few days. The number of days varied from 4 to 15 at different stages in the conversation. I am going to average it out to 7.

The lawn will require a lot of work - watering twice a day, mowing etc. But this time I am determined to make it work!