Lawn freckles...

Lawn freckles...  For some time now, I've been trying to figure out why we have clumps of darker green, faster growing grass in our lawn.  I called them “lawn freckles”, and the grass in them is what I'd like the whole lawn to have.  You can see one of these freckles in the photo at right.

At first I thought these freckles were actually a different kind of grass that somehow was getting established in our lawn.  Then I noticed that the freckles would come and go.  The final clue was that the freckles never appeared where I didn't walk the dogs.  That's when the lamp of understanding was illuminated: lawn freckles are where the dogs pooped and we failed to pick it up (with three dogs, it's sometimes hard to keep track of who's doing what at any given moment). 

After doing a little reading (and multiple sources agree), I've discovered that the reason we have these islands of goodness instead of islands of burned spots is simply that its been raining all the time!  When the rain stops – and it may have done so now – we're going to have little brown burned spots all over, instead of these freckles.

But I think the real message is that my lawn desperately needs some nitrogen.  I think I'll be visiting the fertilizer store sometime soon now...