Day 4: 'Slippin

Ok so if you've been to our house or have been following this chronicle of my misadventures in maintaining a lawn in Seattle, then you know that we have been fighting losing battles with our lawn since we got the house.
But after dealing with the garden and replanting trees I just lost it.
I had had enough of this mother nature nonsense.

She was going down.

Permanently.

But first I had to figure out how...
 
Now there are several reasons that man has ultimately conquered this planet.  We have gained dominance through new innovations that have allowed us to tame the beast that is mother nature.  I mean seriously way back in the day nature was some serious trouble.. just about everything bigger than a dog had horns on it and could ream straight through you on a whim.  Luckily as a race we were able to overcome this and prosper.  Listed below are what I believe to be the top 5

Number 5 : Genetic Engineering
Today we have almost anything thanks to science here we have essentially taken nature and made her our slave, we can create whatever we want (unless the FDA says no) and sell it as produce.  This can take the form of anything from blue strawberries to square fruits that should be round... like watermelon? What the....?

Number 4: Water, Land, and Soil Pollution
If you take a little trip down the Mississippi you will eventually come to Louisiana where it is all parties and Mardi Gras beads because that is what the river brings down for them and eventually the gulf of Mexico.  This is completely true, 100% if by parties you understood mass death and you took Mardi Gras beads to be plastic bits and other pollutants that kill things (they call this area "The Dead Zone").  The problem has gotten so bad that we have had actual fires on the rivers from burning debris.

Number 3: Cars (and the Combustion Engine)
As long as we're talking about the Mississippi and the dead zone.. BP OIL SPILL.  Alright so without combustion this never would have happened! Without combustion there would be far fewer carbon emissions and we wouldn't have been able to travel as far which would allow mother nature to recuperate when we go to areas and completely demolish forests and habitats in a matter of days thanks to ...

Number 2: Fire
When some dumb (that is the current assessment of their intelligence according to wikipedia) cavemen discovered fire they really had the right idea.  With fire they were finally able to scare off some larger mammals and most importantly they allowed us to do stuff like this...

... 'Nuff said.

And finally
Number 1: The Slip N Slide

So the power of the slip n slide is that not only do you waste exorbitant amounts of water, if you leave the dang thing out for long enough you'll kill whatever is under it.  It's simple, it's effective and most importantly it's fun!


So I went to Lowe's and picked me up some black polyethylene cover and we laid it out down our hill... 100 feet, 10 feet wide... it took 7 rolls to cover 80% of the lot... but when it started raining later in the day... we knew what had to be done...