A Piece of My Mind: To Green or Not to Green (LATC Feb 1,2017)
After four years of drought our lawn was a patchy mélange of sparse grass, tough weeds, exposed tree roots, and bare dirt. We have a corner lot, and even with the rose garden, clothesline, and veggie garden along one side, the lawn area still wraps around three sides of our house – a lot of space to replant or re-imagine.
In recent months I had comforted myself that our yard was not yet the ugliest and most neglected-looking on the street, but it was sinking quickly into contention for that title, and one by one the other practitioners of benign neglect were re-landscaping.
Some folks in our neighborhood had opted for xeriscaped yards – super-water-wise with lots of wood chips replacing grass and featuring agaves, sage, fountain grass, and other drought-tolerant plants. This style of landscape looks good with mission-style architecture a la Santa Fe, but our house is a modified ranch style. Desert landscaping doesn’t fit.
Plus, I heard from a reliable neighbor that the cost of such a total re-invention of our yard would be in thousands of dollars. It would take us a long time to pay the investment off in water savings, no matter how ecologically correct it would be
Our gardener, veteran of many years of rain cycles, assured us that a lawn renewal – not with sod, but with seed, could be done at a fraction of the cost of re-landscaping, and now was the ideal time, with a series of winter storms coming in to break the drought. So, despite my Sierra Club membership and longing for green cred, we agreed to his plan: first, thatching the yard to get rid of the existing scrubby growth, then reseeding with a drought-resistant grass, fertilizing, and hoping for rain.
The gardener’s team arrived, and in one Saturday morning our patchy, weedy yard was transformed into a smooth brown expanse of tilled soil It looked so much better that I almost wanted to stop there. But the gardener had already sowed seeds, and we sat back to wait for our new lawn.
Whoops! Here come the birds! Flocks of little brown sparrows and black-capped chickadees descend on that yummy grass seed. I shout at them and shoo them and toss pebbles in their direction, and they fly back into the shrubbery, then flock out again as soon as I am inside the house. How will there be any seeds left to germinate against this feathered horde?
Here comes the rain! Buckets of rain in storm after storm for almost two weeks in January!
Here comes the grass! It’s not exactly a smooth green carpet, and the little blades are noticeably sparser close to the shrubs that sheltered those dratted birds, but it is indubitably grass. Surely those little blades will grow thicker as they push on into the sun! And then
Here come the weeds! For four years of drought we had not worried about weeds- even dandelions had trouble thriving in baked adobe clay. Now we have our first new dandelions. Can oxalis and sticker-burs be far behind?
In another month or so I should be able to tell you whether we should have gone with the xeriscaping after all. Stay tuned!
We were dropped off in Roufillac after a brief orientation on French hiking route markings, and told to “go between the houses and up the path”. Packs on back, hiking sticks in hand, we set off. The sky was partly cloudy, the temperature was in the low 70s, couldn’t have been nicer for our purposes. We wound up through wooded hills past houses and barns built of glowing yellow sandstone, some with tile roofs, many with stone roofs. We came to a small village perched at the top of the hill and realized we had climbed quite far, and there was a ruined castle inviting us to explore just at the tip of the cliff overlooking the valley.
We have a French road map courtesy of AAA.
We have a GPS which came with our car.
My husband treasures a diaper pin. For those of you born in the era of Pampers and Velcro, a diaper pin is a very sturdy type of safety pin, but with a plastic head covering the fastener. The point of the pin is guarded in a G-shaped cavity, making it almost impossible for tiny hands to accidentally open the pin and get scratched. The head of this particular diaper pin is made of blue plastic in the shape of a duck, with a cheery red beak. It was part of a flock of pink, yellow, white, and blue ducky diaper pins (twelve to a card!) used in the care and maintenance of our two sons, now grown and gone. My husband uses it to secure his sun visor to his belt loop or back pack when we are hiking or touristing.
Apparently silver hair at a heavy metal concert is irresistible. No less than three different groups of black-clad, pierced concert-goers approached us to ask “Can we have our picture taken with you?” We were turning from the last set of admirers when Pitchu appeared beside us and invited us backstage. Behind the shelter of a cinderblock wall and a steel door we were able to remove our earplugs and enjoy watching Pitchu practicing her drumming on the steel locker, Prika in lotus position on a crate checking notices from the previous gig, and Fernanda applying the makeup which transformed her from a clear-skinned smiling All-Brazilian Girl to a wild-eyed punk rocker. 
Allyson Johnson 