THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 9, 1995 TAG: 9504050067
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
STAN PARSICK likes the smell of freshly cut grass and the sound of the steady churning of the blades as he fires up the old Craftsman.
Parsick is the kind of guy the rest of us quietly despise. His Virginia Beach yard makes ours look like the barren ground under a swing set while his looks like the 10th green at St. Andrews. You can just imagine him out there at 5 a.m. with a flashlight and tweezers combing the ground for crabgrass.
Stan Parsick is a lawn ranger.
He's a familiar site in his Alanton neighborhood, criss-crossing his perfect blanket of a lawn on his riding mower.
Step onto his lush property and you sink in about three inches. The grass is as neat as a Citadel crewcut. Dandelions, mugwort and that cursed Bermuda grass wouldn't dare set up shop here.
It takes a lot to have a standout lawn in Alanton. This is a neighborhood populated by sprawling ranch houses and graceful lawns that kiss the sidewalk-less streets. In short, it's a lawn lovers' paradise. House after house is framed by verdant, fescue-rich lawns.
But lawns like these don't grow unseeded. Just ask Parsick.
``I don't want to sound like some kind of lawn freak, but it's a joy to sit and look at it every time I cut the grass,'' says the optometrist. ``In some ways, a nice lawn is a reflection of yourself.''
When his family moved into the house two years ago, Parsick went to work. He ripped up every bush and shrub - throwing most away, transplanting a few others. Last summer he couldn't stand the crabgrass anymore so he doused the lawn with Round-Up, killed all the grass and re-seeded with a high-quality fescue.
``Not Kentucky-31, though,'' Parsick warns. ``It's not drought-resistant enough. Even though we have a well, I don't want to deal with all that watering.''
Now with spring upon him, Parsick is reaping the benefit of all of his labors.
``It's almost a spiritual thing,'' he says. ``Planting and fertilizing and watching everything grow.''
If the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, you're probably looking at Walter Combre's lawn. Combre does some of the same things as Parsick - but on a smaller scale. A riding mower would cover his lawn in a New York minute. Combre is an urban lawn lover and proof that you don't need acreage or a suburban address to have a nice yard.
From his 75-by-100-foot plot in Norfolk's Park Place, Combre grows not only an unusual variety of grass but plants as exotic as figs, grapes and kiwis.
And he's embarrassed to have the newspaper poking around his grounds in early spring.
``Nothing's blooming,'' he worries.
``I plant St. Augustine grass,'' he says, apologizing for its beige color in the early spring. ``You don't spread this stuff by seeds; you transplant it. I clip it and move it piece by piece.''
Combre, who has lived in his house on 32nd Street since 1958, has been laboriously moving the heat-resistant grass around his yard for years. He sprouts it in big buckets of water on his deck. Next to the grass buckets are miniature ponds with water lilies and water hyacinths.
He's also cultivated blackberries, blueberries, strawberries and plums.
Gardening is in his blood.
``I grew up in New Orleans, but my mother's people were from the country,'' Combre says. ``Every summer, to give my mother a break, I would get to go to the farm and stay with relatives.
``It was there I learned how to make things grow, and learned the pleasure of eating things right off the vine,'' he says, dreamily asking if we've ever eaten sweet corn right off the vine, without cooking.
Green thumbs must be genetic.
Combre's son, Walter Rommel Combre, tossed a peach pit in the back yard about 20 years ago when he was just a little boy.
Today that peach tree is about 15 feet tall.
``It bears the biggest, sweetest peaches you've ever seen,'' Combre says. ``Sweet as sugar candy.''
Across the river, in Portsmouth, Francis W. Carlisle has been working on his lawn even longer than Combre - since 1950.
The 81-year-old retired electrician says in all those years of being a lawn lover he still hasn't figured out how to keep his grass green in the parched heat of mid-summer. But that doesn't stop him from the tedium of seeding and fertilizing every September. Refertilizing in October. Fertilizing again in November. And once more in December.
Come springtime, Carlisle and his gas-powered Lawnboy cut and cut and cut, never trimming the grass shorter than three inches.
Anything to keep that fescue green.
``I've even called Scotts (company) in Ohio,'' he admits. ``Asking if it would be OK to fertilize again in the spring, and they said `yes.'
``Of course, they're in the business of selling fertilizer,'' he notes wryly.
Carlisle would never offer unsolicited advice, but he inwardly cringes when he sees how some people tend their lawns.
``Some people really scalp it,'' he says. ``If you do that, when the sun beats down it dries out the soil and your lawn turns brown even faster.''
Carlisle says spring is his favorite time of the year. After months of staying indoors he finally gets out and begins to work the soil.
``I don't have the stamina I had when I was younger,'' he says. ``But I still love the smell of newly mown grass.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Joseph John Kotlowski
Francis Carlisle, an 81-year-old resident of Portsmouth, works on
his lawn at the house where he has lived since 1950.
It takes alot to make a lawn stand out in the Virginia Beach
neighborhood of Alanton, but Stan Parsick has done it. " I don't
want to sound like some kind of lawn freak, but it's a joy to sit
and look at every time I cut the grass."<
Color staff photos by Motoya Nakamura
Walter Combre of Norfolk's Park Place neighborhood is a urban lawn
lover and proof that you don't need acreage or a suburban address to
have a nice yard. In addition to the grass, he lovingly cares for
his plants, such as the plum tree above.
by CNB