Thursday, May 31, 2012

Watching the Grass Grow

or Taking Turns

Baseball is nothing if not a leisurely sport.  For some, the pace is part of its appeal.  A lot of the game is cerebral, with batting order and pitching strategies being at least as important as the actual action.  If you're an aficionado, you know the players' stats, the conditions that let them shine, and the ones that spell bad news.  The slow pace allows you to debate the finer points of strategy at length with any poor soul in the vicinity your fellow fans in between pitches.  Scoring may give you an ephemeral rush, but the real joy lies in the tension that builds bit by bit as the game progresses.  At such a measured, moss-gathering pace, passion has a chance to root deeply, grow, and bloom.  Or so I understand.

Greek germander (Teucrium aroanium), sand lovegrass (Eragrostis trichodes), and wood betony,
or pink cotton lamb's ear (Stachys lavandulifolia)

I'm not a huge fan, but do kind of like baseball.  Albuquerque has a minor league team, the Isotopes, and the one game I went to, I had a wonderful time getting acquainted with my neighbors; and then sometimes, something interesting happened on the diamond, too.  In Vermont I used to live close to a college's practice fields and loved to hear the crack of the bat in spring—an oddly thrilling sound, so happy and accomplishing.  I also like the sheer symmetry of the game, with each side taking turns batting and fielding every inning; no matter how the opportunities play out, each team has the same number of shots at success. 

Still, baseball is slow.  My dad thinks that watching a game is like going down to the junkyard to watch the cars rust, or like watching the grass grow.  My mom, on the other hand, is an enthusiastic Colorado Rockies fan.  She looks forward to Opening Day in the spring, knows the overall standing of the team day to day, can spout tidbits about the players' games and personal lives, and arranges her quilting projects so that she can listen to the games at the same time.  But even my mom doesn't mind interrupting a game for an hour-long phone conversation on a Friday night when the Rockies are playing, because nothing happens in the hour that she misses that she can't catch up on pretty easily.  Baseball is a leisurely game, you know.

Silky threadgrass (Nassella tenuissima), with sun roses (Helianthemum nummularium)
and a really big urn (Urnus maximus giganticus).

All to say, the gardening is done for the season.  Not the routine watering and deadheading, of course, but all of the big things:  planting, dividing, pruning.  Memorial Day is always my deadline to have projects finished, ahead of summer's heat and intense, blasting sunshine.  With the holiday behind us, now it's the garden's turn to take action while I sit in the shade in the Adirondack chair and watch the grass grow.

It's a leisurely process, grass growing, in case you were wondering.  The sand lovegrass, over the last few months, has settled in beautifully and is making satisfying spikes next to the puddles of creeping germander and the uncertain plantings of wood betony.  The silky threadgrass has been setting seed for weeks now and continues to beckon enchantingly from behind one urn or another.  But the blue grama grass in the central bed...well, it's taking its own sweet time to fill in, isn't it.

Blue grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis)

In its native short-grass prairie, its slow rate of growth has become a problem.  Once the grass has been destroyed by over-grazing or development, it takes a long time to grow back in again, time it may not have before the vast stretches of ecosystem built around it are seriously damaged.  In the garden, where water and weeding give it a chance to thrive, its pace is only a problem for my own impatient self.  I have to remind myself that this is blue grama's turn at bat, when it can swing at whatever pitches it will.  Or wait them out.  Summer is the garden's inning.

The garden and I aren't in competition, of course, and my garden isn't the major or even the minor leagues.  For most of us, I think, gardening is more like Little League, where a game can go on forever, because you never know whether the six-year-old batters will hold the bat right-side up or run in the right direction or make it to base before being distracted by—hey, look! is that a squirrel? I like your shirt we're having spaghetti for dinner—and where, by hook or by crook, everyone wins something in the end.  With its "let's help everyone do well" attitude, Little League isn't much like the major leagues, except in the slow, leisurely pace.  That easy, breezy tempo, of course, is part of the game's appeal.

Blue grama grass

Sometimes you like knowing that the whole summer lies ahead, to watch the grass grow.

18 comments:

  1. Very nice Stacy! I love watching the grass grow:) Ours is growing so fast that it needs mowed way too often. Something I used to love to do, but never do any longer:(

    Blessings to you today.

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    1. Hi, Elaine! Hope you're hanging in there. Watching grass grow has its perks, doesn't it? Such a quiet, peaceful thing to do... Mowing is such hard work, though--I can't imagine how you would manage it. Oof. The nice thing about slow-growing desert grasses is that they don't actually need mowing!

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  2. Reminds me of Midsomer Murders and the sound of cricket bat and ball. Closest I ever get to cricket, or baseball. I do hope to watch my Ruby Grass grow from the seeds I'm gathering.

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    1. Diana, when I was in the UK, some teenagers started a cricket game in a vacant lot just behind the B&B where I was staying. I watched them through the window for a while and then fell asleep to that sound of bat and ball (and teenage boys teasing each other). I'm sure your ruby grass will be given every chance to thrive!

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  3. I keep thinking that maybe I won't buy any plants until fall when it's the best time to plant in Santa Fe and just let my garden happen, but it's hard to window shop at a nursery.

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    1. You are so right, GirlSprout--window shopping and nurseries just do NOT go together well. On the other hand, it's hard to find the plants you want in good condition in the fall; at least, that's been my experience here.

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  4. Urnus maximus. Tee hee.

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    1. Why should Wile E. Coyote get all the really good lines??? (Fake Latin names for things used to be a running family joke, all b/c of W.E.C.)

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  5. I envy you having finished your gardening chores for the season! We have everything from major construction to weeding to tackle - in between planting for clients :)Still I do love being outside.

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    1. Karen, the nicest thing about a small garden is that you really can finish all the (big) work at some point! Temps are in the 90's now, too, and probably will be every day until September at least, so it really is easier on both garden and gardener if we both pretend that we're done for now. I thought you had finished with the major construction?! On the other hand, I can't imagine that the weeding is EVER done in Seattle...

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  6. If you think baseball is slow, Stacy - watch some cricket. Matches can go on for several days! My father and brother are big fans and go a couple of times a year to watch test matches; I however have no interest but I ought to go I suppose, just to sit in the sun and watch the grass grow. You made a joke! Very understated (and I almost missed it) but a fine joke. (Though, pedantically, I should point out you have U. giganticus. Sorry, pedantry is in my genes. U. maximus is somewhat smaller). Dave

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    1. Dave, even more than baseball, cricket seems to inspire those die-hard, deep-seated passions. It always makes me think of an episode of The West Wing, though, where Pres. Bartlet says, "Whenever anyone tries to explain the rules of cricket to me, I want to hit him over the head with a tea pot." I could see sitting in the sun and watching someone else's grass grow--grass that you will never be called on to mow--being kind of appealing, actually. Especially if there are refreshments, too.

      Thank you so much for pointing out my identification error. Think how horrible it would have been if someone had bought the wrong urn, a mere U. maximus, when they really wanted the giganticus, all because of my misleading caption. Error duly corrected!

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  7. I'm not a sports fan at all. I'll probably be sitting in the garden to escape from the olympics.

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    1. It does sound like the Olympics will be more or less taking over London, b-a-g. The garden sounds like a good alternative.

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  8. Oh I wish our weather had allowed me a 7th inning stretch but no way...the heat of May made everything rush including weeds which have taken over and with the awful April and my knee there was not much getting done...now June is cool and wet and there is so much to do...I am more in an NBA game rushing back and forth to keep up....I do hope that by July my leisurely watching of the grass will take over...lovely post as always Stacy!

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    1. Donna, you made me laugh with your NBA analogy, though I'm sorry you're having to rush so madly! April and May are not ideal months to be sidelined from gardening, that's for sure. I hope you have a chance to call time-out every so often this month, at least. If only that would really stop the clock...

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  9. I'm so impressed that you finish your projects by Memorial Day! I have started listening to everyone's advice that I need to stop working on 100+ degree days. But I hate to have my projects put on hold! I will try to remember your analogy of the baseball game, and realize that the gardening game will go on after the intermission - and that a little time to stop can be good for the game's outcome.

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    1. Holley, if my garden were the size of yours, I wouldn't be finished with my projects, either--probably not ever! Listening to everyone's advice (in this case, at any rate...) sounds EXTREMELY WISE. 100° are for drinking iced tea in. The summer break is a good thing for me (and the garden) because I start fussing otherwise and wouldn't give any of the new plants a chance to settle before moving them or replacing them, etc., if after two weeks they haven't filled in the blank spaces yet...

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