I mentioned the other day how Mom and I bought some plants to begin landscaping the front of our house. Notice the word ‘begin.’ This story is not yet over.
While we set out the plants we purchased, we were counting on one thing. Something large, or rather two somethings large - one in front of each rectangle on the design of our wall and gate. Our house is completely surrounded by a concrete wall, probably about 5 foot in height. There is a large sliding gate in the very front. From the outside, the wall and gate is divided into thirds - the gate and two sections of wall to the right of the gate. Make sense? Don’t worry, I’ll show you a picture at the end.
The two sections of the wall each have a large white rectangle in the center, and we wanted something large to put in front of each of these rectangles, placing the smaller plants we just bought around them. We saw some larger things at the nursery, but nothing really ‘spoke’ to us, mainly because we both set our hearts on something else already. (Or Mom set her heart, and I merely encouraged her. :)
You see, a couple blocks down from us, there were several large clumps of grass. Not just any grass, mind you, but large bushy, beautiful ornamental type grass. If I had seen that grass in a nursery, that tall and such a lovely color, I would have expected to pay a lot of money for it. Yet here it was growing on the side of the road!
Now, you have to understand something about the way it works here. People don’t have the same concept of a mowed lawn here. Generally, people dig up everything that grows in their lawn. This is done with a shovel or a rake, and someone, generally a hired gardener, goes through and pulls up everything that is green. Having a grassy yard is a hard thing to come by. It takes a lot of work to plant, it takes a lot of work to grow, and it takes a lot of work to keep maintained. You have to water it (because this is a desert after all) and then you have to have a lawnmower, etc, etc, etc. So they just pull everything up and keep their yards neatly raked dirt, sand, or gravel. However, the sides of the road or empty plots are just left free for most of the year. All sorts of thorn trees and bushes grow up quickly, as well as several different varieties of grass. Periodically, people will come through and cut down weeds along the side of the road, leave them to dry out for a time, then burn them off. Whether this is done by the government or whether it is done by individuals living in nearby houses, I have no idea.
So all that to explain that this particular grass that caught our eye wasn’t really in someone’s yard. In fact, there were five or six clumps of it along a nearby street, but they were just haphazardly sprung up, several further back into the weeds, but a couple literally on the side of the road. The clump of grass was beautiful – it had thicker stalks and then wispier little pieces, with tall wheat, um, fronds? sticking out of the top. The whole clump was about three feet tall and probably three feet wide, though the bottom root system comprised a much smaller area.
We decided to go for it. That grass was exactly what we needed for the front bed and it was free! It was growing on the side of the road!! Plus, we’d seen where some workers were starting to clear areas of the streets around us. For all we knew, they were going to be cleaning up that street very soon and we wanted to rescue our grass.
But what to do? Is this out of character? Is it socially awkward or culturally offensive? We wanted to be discreet as possible. So we waited until the moments between dusk and sunset. Then we loaded up the car with our supplies, and stealthily pulled away, at least, as stealthily as we could in our little Toyota Chico with a sticking gear shift. Not two houses away from home, a truck pulled behind us. He was starting and stopping and weaving and swerving, making it very clear that we were driving too slow. Little did he know we had two buckets of water in the back we were desperately hoping not to spill. Finally he passed, and we continued to poke along.
We reached our destination (all of three blocks away), and moved into immediate action. Jumping out of the car, we determined which clump we wanted. We went with the one that was closest to the road… less possibility of finding a snake with the grass. Plus, there was a large ditch and then another section of weeds before a fence and someone’s yard, so we were certain that we weren’t taking someone’s lawn decoration.
Oh, we worked so quick. Dumping the water on the plant to loosen the soil, I bunched all the individual grasses together and began pulling from the top while Mom grabbed the shovel and began scraping from the bottom (literally scraping… the thing was growing between the curb and the pavement of the road). Half of it split away, and was immediately plopped into the first bucket and thrown in the back seat. While tugging and shoving on the second half, a group of four guys came around the corner. They never said a word, just gave us the strangest looks. We were both hysterically giggling at this point. Finally the second half came loose, was safely stowed in the back seat, and home we drove, acting as if it was perfectly normal for two white women to be digging up grass on the side of the road.
(See our grass? Ain't it purty? Don't mind the large sand pile or the piles of rocks... it's a work in progress.)
Now the grass has its home in our front yard and we’re just praying it doesn’t die. :)
