So Long and Thanks for the Hives

So, about that doomed Mexican Feather Grass...

It all started when we got rid of our lawn.

I've lived on the East Coast, where lawns just happen and people spend their summers blithely mowing their entire property.  But here in SoCal, lawns are not in the natural order of things. You might not be able to tell by looking, but San Diego is more coastal desert than tropical paradise. We get only around 12 inches of rain per year. A lush lawn here usually indicates major irrigation efforts (with water mostly piped in from the Colorado River or Central California) and lots of chemicals. Here's a link about where San Diego gets its water. Interesting and scary!

When we started work on the Beet Ranch in earnest, my primary gardening principle was: Grow what wants to grow where it's planted.

Lawns do not want to grow here. We ripped out our lawn.

Our next door neighbor happened to be a landscape designer, and he helped us plan a low water front yard including (you guessed it) a big swath of Mexican Feather Grass.

Since we don't have Feather Grass now, here are some pictures of my dream Feather Grass from just up the road in Solana Beach.

I love this little strip of landscaping down the HWY 1.  In fact, I got in a car accident a few years back, right about...

 here.

I was temporarily distracted by the sea of golden waving fronds. No kidding. Actually, I think my exact thought was... How doooo they get their grass to look like that? And then I rear ended a Volvo. 

I loved our Feather Grass when first it was new.

Feather Grass at its most feather lovely.

It fulfilled my then primary gardening principle.  It wanted to grow in my yard, big time. We started out with about six plants, but I really wanted to go for the river o' grass look (see above in Solana Beach). I fretted about getting more little grass plants to fill in the gaps between my big grass plants.  Then the grass feathered, and we discovered we didn't have to buy more Feather Grass, because the Feather Grass was making more Feather Grass.

Tribble of the plant kingdom, tribbling.

Soon every square inch of bare soil in our front yard was covered in a soft mat of clingy Feather Grass seeds and shooting up adorable green baby grasslets.

 Oh! Look! Like little baby kittens!

And we encouraged them. I transplanted baby grasses from crowded spots to bare spots. I watered them. I talked to them.

Unfortunately, before he moved, our neighbor neglected to tell us that Feather Grass needs to be lopped off every winter, like this:

So we didn't lop our grass.  And in the course of one season, it went from garden of the flowing savannah to yard of the natty dread.

Like this, only worse.

All that Fall, I went out and spent hours meticulously snipping off the dreads with clippers. (This was a couple years before I embraced the butt-kicking gratification of the power hedge trimmer.) Still, I was too blinded by love to see that, armed with clippers, I was fighting a losing battle with the Feather Grass.

I noticed that romping around in the grass for a few hours left me all kinds of itchy. I thought I was just getting the seeds and feathers stuck in my clothes and they were tickling me. But then, one day, my mom came out to help me snip, and she had an asthma attack. Bish was enthusiastically barfing wicker furniture. And one morning, walking the neighborhood, I noticed little baby Feather Grasslets sprouting in all the sidewalk strips up and down my block on both sides of the street.

Slowly I realized my beloved grass was a) trying to kill us all and b) take over the world.

My mother-in-law (who is amazing) helped us enormously by ripping the feathergrass out. Then she promptly broke out in hives.

When we planted and subsequently ripped out the grass, I could not find any information about the invasive nature of Mexican Feather Grass. Now, however, there is some discussion about the aggressive propagation of Feather Grass (AKA Nassella tenuissima) in the California agricultural community.  Click here for an article from the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of California about new invasive grasses in California.

My new primary gardening tenet?

Don't negotiate with any plant seeking world domination.

Tempting, but no.

Ode to Feather Grass Departed

If Bishrito could write a poem, it would be about Feather Grass.

Mexican Feather Grass. Nassella tenuissima.



Oh baby.

I had a brief love affair with this plant too. But, Bish, oh, he had it bad.

For a long time, we thought his motivation to escape was purely about Feather Grass. At every opportunity he would zoom out the front door, go straight to it and start gobbling it, wallowing and purring like a maniac.

At first, we thought this routine was kind of cute and harmless. Aw! Bish WANT Feather Grass! Awwwww!

WANT is the understatement of the century when it came to the way Bish felt about the Feather Grass. Whenever the front door opened, he would morph instantly from a batcat-shaped bed lump into a 15 lb Feather Grass seeking missile. There were incidents. I dropped a cup of coffee down my uniform and into my nursing bag trying to hold him back with my foot. My husband accidentally shut his head in the door. (This did not remotely slow his grassward trajectory.) He bowled my mom over backwards, clean off the front step.

I worried (because that is what I do), but I couldn't find any real evidence to support my concerns that Bish's Mexican Feather Grass intake might be problematic. Feather Grass doesn't appear on ASPCA's list of plants toxic to cats.  Bish didn't seem any worse off for the amount of the stuff he was consuming. And, my husband pointed out, it did keep him from running up the street when he managed to escape the house. I worried anyway. Feather Grass blades are stiff, faintly barbed, and look entirely indigestible. Every once in awhile, Bish would barf up something vaguely resembling a wicker basket. I'd find long Feather Grass poop trains in the litterbox. And well, like any good nurse, I can't abide disordered poop.

So, I tried to distract Bish from the Feather Grass. I brought home a plastic tub of cat grass. He was not remotely interested. I grew a cat-level pot of cat grass and set it directly in his sight-line to the Feather Grass. He jumped over it. I replaced the cat grass with catnip. Every cat in a three block radius started loitering in our front yard. Over a period of several days, the nip began to look more and more badly used, until one morning I found the plant, dug up completely and laying in the middle of the street. (I mention this as testament to the quality of the nip in question.) But, alas, even homegrown Beet Ranch nip could not divert Bishrito from his devotion to his beloved Feather Grass.

So, finally, I ripped the Feather Grass out.

More about that next time.

The Quest of the Mighty Bishrito

Bishrito has spent most of his life as an indoor cat.

Bishrito's view of the Beet Ranch front door.

The ASPCA and the Humane Society of the United States both recommend domestic cats be kept as indoor pets. (For articles, click the links.) They cite multiple rationales for this recommendation, such as the increased lifespan of indoor cats compared to outdoor cats (10-12 years indoor vs. 2 years outdoor).

Here are my top three very good (I think) personal reasons for keeping our cats indoors:

1) We live on a street, with cars.
2) Coyotes are native to San Diego. Coyotes eat cats.
3) I like birds.

As much as we love Bish, we have no illusions about his natural instincts as a predator.

 Take me to your birdies.

Click the sparrow or Bishrito the Birdinator for a scary article from the American Bird Conservancy about how many birds are killed by domestic cats every year.

 Friends not food!

Unlike many catrearing decisions we've made over the years, I feel like our decision to keep Bish inside has a strong evidence basis.

But, that argument is lost on Bishrito.

We thought it wouldn't be difficult to make Bish an indoor cat. Our other cat, Clyde (an older female tabby), certainly never cared. Bishrito has a good life here at the Beet Ranch. He has a cat tree, regular meals, TREATS, great healthcare, a big basket of cat toys, and humans who love him. We thought Bish wouldn't remember his first two weeks of life in the wild. If he did, we thought he wouldn't remember them fondly. We were wrong.

He longs for the wild.

This picture always breaks my heart.

Who could fail to relate to the yearning to get out? To seek the wild in a place where the wild has been denied?

Bishrito's quest is our quest too.