So Why Is My Grass Still Brown?

Until July 22 of this year our area was under a major heat wave. The week prior to that date was especially brutal with daytime highs averaging in the upper 90's with the 20th and 21st both topping 100 degrees. The heat index hovered between 105 and 110. We were headed to the hottest, driest July on record.

It was so hot and dry my heat-loving tomato plants were wilting and the normally omnipresent mosquitoes were nowhere to be found. We couldn't even get relief in our pool (see previous post). It was as warm as bathwater.

On the plus side, I hadn't needed to cut the grass in ten days. Usually, I have to cut it twice a week just to keep up.

 Then came July 22 and .53 inches of rain, a welcome relief to be sure. That was followed by thunderstorms bringing 1.5 inches the next day and 2.99 inches the day after that. That was just in my rain gauge--yeah, I'm a weather geek--many places got more and had to deal with serious flooding. On Tuesday evening I fired up the lawn mower just to even up the few blades of green grass that were growing with all the brown ones that weren't.

Last night and into this morning we got another round of storms that dropped .9 inches and counting. Some places up toward Wisconsin got close to ten times that. So instead of this being the driest July on record, now we've set a record for the wettest July ever. There's rain predicted for the next two days, too.

So why is my grass still brown?

Increases Means Raises, Right?

   It’s hotter than hell today so I spent some time in the pool. Yeah, I live in northern Illinois and have a backyard pool even though the swimming season runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day... if we’re lucky. Unlike most people I don’t get a summer vacation and I work every weekend. Even a short getaway to the beach is out of the question. That’s why I have a pool.
   In checking the chemistry with a little test strip that comes with all the chemicals crystal water requires, I found the chlorine level was low. It didn’t take a test strip to figure that out. The heat and sun remove chlorine from the water faster than a CEO lays off a thousand employees and takes a ten million dollar bonus. The water was as murky as what goes on in Washington. The strip also told me that the pH was very low. That leads to high chlorine use.
   So I reached for the bottle of pH Rise. This is a powder that you mix in a bucket with water and pour the resulting slurry into the pool to raise the pH level. Makes perfect sense, huh? I thought so too until I took a closer look the bottle.
   The product is called pH Rise but I guess that’s not clear enough for some people. Right below the name it says, “to increase the pH of swimming pool water.” On the back of the bottle it says, “this product is meant to increase the pH of swimming pool water.” Now here’s the kicker. Even though that statement is crystal clear as chlorinated water, in parentheses it says. “causes it to go up.” When did we become so ignorant that we have to be told three times that something called pH Rise is designed to raise the pH level. Thankfully, they didn’t go into an explanation of just what pH is.
   Maybe anyone who has to be reminded that “increases” means raises shouldn’t be adding chemicals to water, or anything else.