Moss

The hard work is done. Now it is a matter of waiting. And seeing what happens.

Hopefully, nothing will happen quickly. I am going for the slow, steady response. The green shoots of recovery. Literally. I planted a new lawn today: the lawn at the front of my house. Which is hardly a lawn, to tell the truth, but rather a strip of grass adding a little bit of colour to an otherwise drab frontage. The colour is predominantly green, though over the years it has been less the vivid green of thick, luxuriant grass but more the somewhat mossy green of thick, spongy moss.

I am not sure where it came from. Perhaps the seeds (or spores? does moss have spores?) were wafted passively here on a passing breeze. Or perhaps they were sown surreptitiously in the middle of a moonless night by a malevolent neighbour. These things happen. Either way, the moss seems to have thrived in a worryingly enthusiastic way, to the extent that the indigenous grass blades have hardly had a look in. Having watched helplessly for several seasons now the relentless annexation of the lawn, and having tried unsuccessfully to rake out the offending intruder with a rake, I thought enough was enough: it was time to grasp the metaphorical nettle. So I dug up the lawn, returning it to its primordial uninhabited state, and painstakingly laid some virgin turf. I was assured, by several websites that professed to know about these things, that this would yield an instant new lawn, as opposed to the old fashioned approach of sowing seed, which was a bit more hit and miss, and susceptible to crows, or other winged creatures, stealing the seeds, and would anyway take months to produce anything worth getting the mower out for.

So, it is done: now it is a matter of waiting. And seeing whether it shrivels up into heartless dust, or whether it survives, flourishes, colonises a New World. One small step.