I think the last rain we got here in Austin lasted about 90 seconds, so I'm hoping for a longer rain today. So far, it's been 3 minutes, so we've already beaten the previous effort. My beautiful water-hogging St Augustine grass that used to be a lush green is now as brittle and colorful as straw. The sparse bleeps of green come from patches of weeds. Before I put in the St Augustine grass about 5 years ago, my yard was always green, even during droughts. It wasn't grass that kept it green, but dandelions and 3 leaf clovers (never any luck-bringing 4 leaf clovers) and onion grass and other weeds. You can't kill weeds with only a little old drought. Those suckers know how to survive. There's alot to be said for weeds. First of all, it's way cheaper to plant weeds than buying pallets upon pallets of St Augustine. In fact, it costs nothing to grow weeds and maintain them. They stay green year round.
St Augustine grass is not only expensive to install and expensive to maintain, but also expensive in terms of time. The first year or 2 that I had this beautiful grass, I spent hours on my hands and knees plucking out individual weeds by their roots. It was actually fun. I was probably only helping the weeds to multiply because I rarely got the whole weed by the entire root. But it was a challenge to crawl around on my hands and knees on this lush lawn. This had a few drawbacks however. First of all, the people who laid my grass failed to level the dirt before they laid it down, so there were high and low points. They said that it would eventually fill in on it's own, but I have to wonder what they meant by "eventually". Obviously 5 years isn't long enough because I'm still constantly stepping into holes and uneven places. This, however, is not nearly as disturbing as the other reason that I spend little time nowadays crawling or walking on the grass.
The rain has stopped and it's 3:40... a total of 18 minutes. The first 5 minutes were a good hard rain and the rest was a drizzle. My grass isn't green yet. I doubt the rain even penetrated the hard crusty outer shell of sun-baked dirt. Oh well... I suppose it's better than nothing.
The second reason I don't like my grass anymore is that the neighborhood cats love it. Those plump full blades of grass must feel delightful on a cat's little bottom as it squats to defecate. They seem to relish my lawn as they drop their processed breakfast, lunch, and dinner. How something so small can smell so aromatic is beyond me. I can smell it at least 20 yards away, even though it's impossible to see. It drops down between the blades of grass and disappears, while it's fragrance wafts upward and outward. My dogs can find it like heat seeking missiles, which makes matters even worse. It smells so irresistible to dogs that they will follow their noses directly to the spot, burrow into the grass, and emerge triumphant with the offending delicacy between their teeth. Before I even realize what they're doing, they've finished consuming it and are looking for more. The up side is that I won't step in it now and the down side is that my dogs have perpetually horrendous breath.
The moral of this long-winded story is that grass is overrated. I'd rather take it all out and plant native Texas cactus and plants that require little or no water. However, this would require some effort on my part and I'm not in the mood. So, my current plan is to let the grass die and the weeds grow back. That seems pretty native, don't you think?
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