At first it was all softness and greening, supple ideation.  I was so enjoying opening the windows to the sweet scent of it, especially after rain. My nose filled greedily. I am grateful to be among the allergy-free.

I talk to things, and they talk back, and so, when I heard something like notes rising like chiming mist from early morning ground, I turned my full attention towards the sound.  It was faint—a human eardrum could almost fail to vibrate to the collective rhythm of the hundreds humming, blade to blade.  I tell you, it was glorious! Such a verdant and tender song.

When my body was called down into it, the buoyant extended carpet was a welcoming, a soft landing at dawn, a place to drop pretense and reclaim myself as something wilder than middle aging two legged, moving towards Crone.

I wanted it to stay this way—a sweet, simple story—but when my skin grew wet with contact, my belly pushing into earth and my chestnut eyes level with the dun dirt, the singing ceased. I couldn’t deny what I saw and heard next.

Yard grass spoke, said “We proud stems have had quite too much of the sickly sweet chemicals your sprayers assault us with, the artificial excrement you think we thrive on. Bad enough you planted us here, but they way you keep extinguishing our thicker brothers and thornier sisters is nothing short of criminal.”

My protest was immediate, vehement: I’ve never invited Chemlawn here! Anything green is welcomed, much to the neighbor’s chagrin.

I knew of harms , of course. There is no pretending it away: the ChemLawn company pushes planticide, reinforcing the sad notion there is only one kind of good green ground cover. The weeds protest, but in many communities they are marginalized, in some even reviled. But here, within the limits of my property lines, we welcome most growing things.

“Doesn’t matter”, they hissed. “The wind spreads the sickness, and you multiply the damage with your watering.  Because of you, the shiny stems enjoying human-made rains look down on the drier, yellow ones your reach misses, as if the lack of water in their patch is a character flaw.”

I learned more: They hate their haircuts, not so much for the stinging the mower blades impart, but more for the buzzing, droning, blade- numbing sound that mutes the chlorophyll.

I once saw a yard on a Househunters show, some West Coast thing with a bungalow set upon it. The grass was intensely green, uniformly even. Only when  the prospective owners stepped on it did we all realize it was fake, and that this is a thing.  Artificial lawn. So easy to maintain!

Why not just paint the ground outside our dwellings? Set bricks around it, and spray them greenest green?  Wouldn’t that be less violent than all the hacking, and buzzing, and poisoning, and wouldn’t it be fun to watch the neighbors react?

Do wild grasses have a better life? Besieged by insects, gnawed by wild creatures, but free to grow and die and grow again, and oh! the dances the whistling winds bring on.

Melinda

Thanks so much for reading, commenting, sharing if you’d like. May your day hold soft landings and meaningful encounters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo by Alexandra Gold on Unsplash