I had a great idea a few years back. It was based on anecdotal experience, and I thought it very clever.
When we moved several years ago, we moved to a large piece of property. It had once had a mobile home on it, and we had planned on reusing the foundation for our new house.
But that was not to be…
We bought a much, much larger house to accommodate all the little human bodies that came in tow along with the adults. And that required grading a new flat pad on which house and new foundation would rest.
In the aftermath, we were left with a lot of bare soil. It was graded down to the underlying clay and nothing would grow on it.
“I know what will grow!” I said excitedly. “It’s a grass that I’d used on my old property where nothing would grow. Bermuda! It will be PERFECT!”
“I don’t like that stuff,” grumbled the dad of the little humans.
“Ech. It will be okay. Just watch!!”
In the beginning…
The property behind the house was beautiful. It was filled with trees and undergrowth. With a bit of management, it would look like a park!
At least in my head.
But I didn’t take into consideration our adventure with our camping experience.
When we first moved to our new location, we were excited! We’d bought a second, larger tent (as we already had one), camp stove, the whole nine yards. We were going to rough it until our new house arrived.
It wasn’t supposed to be a long wait. Maybe a few weeks at most.
But…
We were thinking of our last experience in another state. Everything there was run by strict guidelines of the state and county. Everything was inspected. Foundations and roof pitches were strictly regulated. Everything was in order and organized…as organized as could be considering the salesman forgot to get the electrical company to inspect the location of the incoming power lines. But that’s another story.
A few glitches and frustrations along the way, but the pad, foundation, and house were all in place within about a two weeks. And the inspection and move-in another few weeks at most.
So…no big deal.
Right?
HAH!!!!!
We were promised the house would be ready to be put on the property within our expected time frame.
So we set up camp in a lovely place under a canopy of trees. We put up tarps to cover the common area between the tents. Stove, cat cages complete with angry kitties, pots and pans, bedding, everything.
It was so beautiful! You could see a million stars in the darkening sky. The breeze gently blew and we had a working well to use for fresh water. A portable camp shower and bathroom facilities as well.
Life was good!
Three days later, the night before my son-in-law was to go to his first day of work in this new state, we saw Noah passing us on the street below. The entire heavens opened up dumping a river of water onto our campsite. Thunder and lightening lit up the once clear sky. Us adults stood under the tarps in the wee hours of early pre-dawn to hold up the common area tarps in order to get the heavy rain water off of them and keep them from collapsing.
All the while, the rain water ran like an ocean tide down the hill, through our once-dry tents, and on to the street below.
Yeah. I forgot all that.
So I sowed the seeds on the bare soil, raking them in and watering them carefully. For weeks. And weeks.
Nothing grew. Not even a single stem.
Until the end of season. After the rains came again. And they grew….in our neatly landscaped flower beds…far from their original location uphill.
Silly me.
Three years later…
I have a flower bed with Bermuda grass, also known out here, aptly enough, as “Devil’s Grass”.
It grows great!
But it didn’t cover the bare soil I had intended. At all! The native grasses finally covered all of that.
Nope. This grass decided it was perfect fine where IT planted itself.
And crept its way, somehow, to the front flower beds as well…
And crept its way, somehow, to the front flower beds as well where we’d carefully planted antique, fragrant roses.
Where it was safe because any weed killer would kill the roses, but the grass would staunchly refuse to die.
And the rhizomes could frolic amongst the desired plants we’d planted.
So much for weed barrier and mulch.
So I went to war with the stuff…
…and haven’t yet won the war.
I discovered that out here…the plants use tactics beyond the reach of human intervention.
I discovered that out here, where the soil and weather is harsher than where we’d come from, the plants use tactics beyond the reach of human intervention. Between underground runners, above ground seeds, and a determination to survive no matter what, the war against weeds is real.
Weed killer is just a suggestion to the grasses that grow out here. They sacrifice a few blades of grass to the weed killer gods, and calmly, underneath the surface, continue to thrive with their deep root systems and underground railways.
Even gravel is victim to their wiles. My entire gravel driveway is turning to soil as the roots of these combination native and Bermuda grasses seed themselves and use their roots to break up any loose stones that might prevent them from drinking the scarce water supply in the soil below. The relatively short, $4000 gravel driveway is now turning into sand.
Clever little buggers!
With weed killers out of the question, I discovered that the only way to eliminate these pests is to try to pull them up by the roots (not possible because of the clay soil dries after rains within hours to a hard, cement-like texture), or use a string trimmer (which, to cover the small flower beds, had to have the thick nylon string changed out every five minutes. Seriously. I timed it. It took literally an hour and a half to run that sucker in a 3 ½’ x 35’ flower bed. In the early morning high humidity, burning hot sun at about 9am. Yeah.).
It was glorious to see all that dead grass piled up on the ground!…
[Until] it rained.
In spite of the difficulties, the string trimmer worked! It was glorious to see all that dead grass piled up on the ground! I thought I’d figured out a way to win the battle…
But it rained. Once. And all that grass just popped back up and stuck their little green tongues at me, waving happily once more in the perpetual breezes that blow softly through the rolling hills.
So I did some research…
For all my best intentions, I should have listened to my son-in-law. It wouldn’t have stopped the runner grass problem that invaded the flower beds.
The native grasses are thicker. They can be more easily managed because their roots are more shallow. But it would have stopped the finer Devil’s Grass from living anywhere near those areas.
So, having gone to the Extension Agency in the area, I discovered that Bermuda, sorry…Devil’s Grass, takes between 2-3 YEARS to eradicate…maybe.
With a ton of work, cardboard, diligence, and prayer.
So, I will be working out my past sins for quite a long time, it seems. I guess I deserved it.
Never assume that where you came from is adaptable to the place you moved to. They climate might look the same, and the soil seem richer than your other location, but it’s not.
Not even if it’s within the same state. Or climate zone.
Trust me on this one!
So, what happened to our first campsite?
After about three and a half months of hot weather hell (it was in the 100’s, not to mention the heat index which added another 5 degrees or so on top), and almost all my retirement savings, we had to finish, fix, repair all the damage the manufactured house dealer left us. They put us on the back burner like the rest of their customers and left us hanging with half-finished work.
[The dealer] put us on the back burner like the rest of their customers and left us hanging with half-finished work…
And they left their tiny backhoe (which I was getting really tempted to sell in compensation) sitting amidst all the large holes they dug up which destroyed our waterlines.
Not to mention having to bring up the electrical main lines installation up to code. (Note to the mobile home installation companies: Don’t drape live electrical lines over the top of tie-downs. They vibrate and do bad things when the two now-exposed wires touch each other…Thankfully, we had a licensed electrician fix your work. You’re welcome.)
Everything we owned was under tarps in piles. The rains leaked through destroying much of our furniture and belongings. And we lived in a hot metal shipping container for about a month until the 110 degree internal temperature became unbearable inside the cube.
So we had to rent a camper for a week…
It was so hot inside that camper that even there, with AC running full-blast, the plastic walls were melting in the 90 degree heat!
The dealer finally gave us a window unit to move into the large house…which had both side dropped and were in the process of being repaired. So, while the work on the repairs were being done, we moved in. And the window unit couldn’t take much of the heat or humidity out of the house.
Not to mention that we had to run it off of an extension cord to a plug that was inside the shipping container (courtesy of the former property owner who used the box as her laundry room).
And the well went out during all this time as well. And the septic system had to be moved because the “expert grader” graded the house location lower than the existing septic system. AND the septic system had to be upgraded.
Even the french drains that were needed about a year and a half later to keep the poorly installed foundation pillars from being washed away had to be installed by us. Plus gutters and landscape timbers to redirect all that lovely water. (Remember all that water from the hill behind the house?)
Yeah. Who needs money?
But there is a happy ending…
No. Not with the grass. That will be a penance for a very long time.
But the experiences we discovered during the move.
We learned that we had a lot more inside us than we thought. And we met people we never would have met without all the hardships…
We learned to live on far less than we made…because we had to. And learned to be grateful that we didn’t get sick, drown, injured, bitten by the deadly snakes that lived in the area, or were left without food or water. We discovered great neighbors who, without knowing us, supported us and supplied the food and water we needed – even offering us the use of their showers and air conditioned homes to help us out (which we blissfully didn’t take advantage of because we already felt like we had imposed on their kindness enough).
We were truly blessed. For without hardships, we wouldn’t have known anyone here. Nor would we discover the resilience that we all had inside that hadn’t yet been tapped.
And the determination of nature showed us what we needed to learn to survive in this harsh climate.
We learned a lot.
And it’s paid off.
Except for the grass.
That is a work in progress. And a lesson to NEVER grow anything that won’t survive in the place I have been planted.
I need to be more like the Bermuda grass and start growing runners…I’d be unstoppable!
