We lost three beautiful maples last year. It was tragic. We bought our house in the summer of 2022, and one of the chief reasons was that the property included six big, mature trees (two oaks, a sweetgum, and three maples) that provided plenty of shade from the scorching Oklahoma heat.

Around the deck and out over the yard, you could actually — get this — sit and enjoy the outdoors.

But in 2023, the maples didn’t take the summer well. They wilted and went prematurely dormant. I called out an arborist to take a look, and he told me, to my horror, that they were already beyond help. A fungus was killing the maples, and it was irreversible. He recommended cutting them down before they fell on the house during a winter storm, which I did last fall, very reluctantly. After removing the trees and grinding the stumps, I was left to spend the winter looking at a big patch of mulch and dirt in the middle of my front yard.

This spring, I decided to fix it. Oh, I know that autumn is the best time to plant turf grass — and my mother-in-law warned me my project wouldn’t take — but I was determined to try.

In early March, I dug out all the mulch from where the stump grinder had done its work. I worked my way down until the soil looked root and wood free, carting the debris away in my wheelbarrow. Then I filled the void with good topsoil, raking it smooth. As soon as the weather started to turn from cold to cool, I planted tall fescue seed to match the rest of the lawn, spreading it by hand from a big bag the way I remember seeing my older cousin do it. I then added starter fertilizer and a healthy covering of peat moss to keep the birds away.

I timed my planting for a three-week period in which I didn’t have to travel at all. After the first deep watering, for several weeks — morning, afternoon, and evening — I’d come out and mist the soil down, keeping the more or less six-by-six-foot area moist but not soupy.

After about ten days, I saw the first green shoots peeking above the peat moss. I kept watering. After two weeks, the shoots were everywhere. At the three-week mark, I traveled to New York for military drill, leaving behind a lush green carpet of baby grass.

I let it grow tall and full. For a solid five weeks, I avoided cutting it — and I did my best to keep the boys from trampling it. At the six-week mark, after having mowed around the circle for a few cuts of the wider yard, I finally trimmed it.

All through the unseasonably cool and rainy spring here in Oklahoma, my grass grew fast and lush and green. Clearly, it was going to make it. Clearly, I had made it work, and I was proud.

And then . . . well, and then it started to really warm up. By late May, the older, established fescue that surrounded my new patch of turf was very obviously growing fuller and taller more consistently under the Oklahoma sun. By early June, the new grass was yellowing. I kept watering, hoping that the grass would recover. By mid-June, bare spots began appearing. By the last week of June, however, as the temperature consistently rose above 90, I had to accept that I was utterly losing.

Today, on the first day of July — not one single blade of grass remains from the lush green carpet of mid-spring. It’s all dead.

I should have listened to my mother-in-law.