Greener Grass

I do not know what kind of lawn my father planted in our first house. My recollection now solely comes from a fading photo of my parents standing in the front yard; smiling faces that look intrinsically familiar yet foreign at the same time. Each time I set that tarnished photo down, I finish by looking at the grass crushed beneath their feet. They have given no thought as to what it took make each blade so very green, just smiles offered to the camera's lens. We only lived there a few years, then an apartment for a short time, then finally the structure was built that I came to call home. When I was old enough to obtain a cognitive mind, it was the dichondra grass in the yard that became my strategic link to the formulation of the word "home". It was so exact in its growth pattern; small delicate stems terminating in a clover-like leaf. Green became my favorite color: a dark, rich, intense shade of the green worn by that dichondra basking in the Southern California sun. Every Saturday I wanted to walk through the yard in my bare feet not wanting to cut the grass as the mower lopped off those wonderful, green, leafs. Soon after my mechanized assault, the injuries healed, the grass again spring-spry as all the headless stems had grown back.
As I grew into high school the time I spent on the lawn grew shorter each week. The frail yet beautiful grass that was memory's seed became not what I did each weekend but nothing more than a pesky chore that did not always get done. Why I took great offense at my father's intent to push woody runners of St. Augustine into the tranquil sea of soft green I will never know, I just did. Why should I mind, I was waxing the Malibu for the weekend as if someone other that me would notice. The coarse, thick blades St. Augustine entwined themselves amongst the vivid green stocks just as a python wraps itself around its evening meal. I never knew the exact moment that the dichondra died and the St. Augustine assumed control; it just happened, it was there. The passionate warmth that I so wanted to have attached to the memory of my childhood home became flawed, in part, by the fading vision of that long, cozy home with the stiff, off-green lawn it had when I last saw it. I still fight to put the dichondra into that vision but with only false and soon forgotten success; the St. Augustine still pushes its way in.
I lived in Missouri for a while where my yards were never anything more than mowed fields. The remaining stubble was harsh even poking its way through the hard rubber soles of my harachis. That yard really looked appealing when it was tall, overgrown. Long, feathery stocks of Timothy about two feet high, deep purplish-red flowers of red clover, the stature and beautiful evil of thistle all blowing in concert on the evening's wind. Mowing it all down to one inch storks, I tried planting blue grass and rye but the natural growth never let that succeed. I derive more comfort from a trip I made to my father's childhood home just before I moved back West. That image still remains as intense as the day it happened. It was an old, decaying two-story house, hand built by my grandfather and his friends. You could still see the integrity of the structure but the yard around the house had grown back to its natural state. The holistic beauty the entire image is of an old farmhouse sinking into an ocean of flowing grasses and creeping vines. The collective nature in the seemingly incompatible parts of that vision giving that recollection great staying power and resonance whenever I ruminate on that memory. That was my father's house and his grass, not intrinsic enough for me to call mine like viewing art but never quite knowing for sure what the artist's impetus.
For the last fifteen years I have lived in the desert of Arizona. Supposedly, tumble weeds cannot even grow here as they just become vegetative road kill. My father and mother are no longer present on this earth but are still standing in some kind of grass somewhere, smiling. I now have my own yard, and it has grass growing in it. Most yards in the desert are planted with Bermuda grass and, for whatever sense it makes, thrives in the heat of summer then goes dormant, turning a dead-like brown in winter. I liked the Bermuda when I first moved in: the yard was already established, it is soft on bare feet, and you do not have to mow it but half of the year. As time passed, I came to the conclusion that the Bermuda was not a color that would have a lasting legacy for me. Over time its pale green blades just seem to keep getting fainter and stiff. I tried planting dichondra as if to resurrect the ideal of nurturing the perfect green grass; the ultimate comfort found within the link to my childhood home. For a myriad of reasons that did not work, so I decided to do some horticultural research to obtain success. After very little effort into the preferred grass types for arid climates, I came across some troubling data on dichondra. It really is weed, Kidney weed. The reference went on to say it was best never mowed and did well when planted where it would not be walked on. So, I dug some St. Augustine out of my head and planted it in the yard. It is still in the process of choking out the last few remnants of Bermuda, but it has almost won.