GRASS

Not that type of Grass...the green, lawn type. My whole life I have adored grass as a horse rider, always loving those green, lush fields to gallop across. The smell of cut grass, the waves of the blades in the wind, the contrast of the vivid color against a blue sky....oh how poetic.

I hate the stuff now. Of course things have really changed. I live in the west now and I see how much human management of a lawn is required, how much intense watering and fertilizing necessary to keep that lush green fluffy stuff in front of your house. A total waste of resources and time. If you want grass, move to Maryland.

We have a lot of grass on the farm, I can't wait to get rid of it. Especially around the house. It doesn't help that its not pretty grass and is turning yellow but the fox tails are out of control. They are everywhere and attach themselves to the dogs every chance they get. We finally clipped Denali the other day only to find some fox tails had worked their way under his skin. We extracted them but now he is easier to check him. They also get dragged into the house and since we had this wonderful inside/outside carpet (which we thought was a brilliant idea, cheap, well wearing, warmer in the winter) the fox tails attach themselves to it and work their way into the pile and require individual, hand extraction during vacuuming, gotta love that!!

It is taking about 2 days to mow and weed wack the property so we are hoping that by planting some crops and ridding the grass around the house and Xeriscaping we can take back control and make our property less water reliant and only irrigate where needed for the crops and hopefully the majority of that resource will be derived from rainwater catchment and greywater reuse.

So how to persuade others that live in drought ridden areas that they don't need green lawns - its amazing how prevalent they are out here.