Memorial Day 2026
I’ve spent most of this weekend watching grass grow.
When we bought our house, the neglected yard next to us was an overgrown tanglement of brush. A few years back, I got sick of looking at it, rented a Brush Hog, and cleared as much of it as I could… but the patch closest to the house was still too dense with wild grape vines to get a rotor tiller into. Not being able to turn the soil, this patch didn’t get seeded and remained even after the other 80% became a lush yard of green grass. I attempted to clear the remaining patch again last year, but by time I got to prepping it for turning and seeding, it had already started to grow back.
The combination of beating this brush patch down last year followed by having the first proper Western New York winter in a long time took its toll on the vegetation. In the break between SRO Sonoma & COTA, I was not only able to clear it {by hand}, but also turn it twice. Finally, after returning home from the SRO/IMSA triple-header of COTA/Laguna/Sebring, I was able to turn the soil one last time and then last weekend, sow grass seed.
And so, thanks in part to the unfavorable weather this holiday weekend, I’ve been delighted every time I’ve walked past the window and seen tiny grass seedlings poking up and reaching for the sky.
It’s the same sporadic unfavorable weather that’s kept me inside that has me thinking about holiday weekends of the not-to-distant past.
In my previous job as a structural engineer, Memorial Day commonly marked the shift out of “design season” and into “construction season”, albeit as both overlapped. This made for very long days in the office and the drowning feeling of always being behind no matter what you were able to accomplish and get off your desk. The dead of winter turned into the dying days of summer before you even had a chance to realize it. Memorial Day was that one chance to sleep in and take stock of life with an “Out of Office” notification up.
Nowadays, in this second life centered around motorsports, this holiday I’m inadvertently finding myself taking stock again. Winter still turns to summer too soon, but at least I’m able to watch the grass grow now.
