Weeds

I AM sure Max Ehrmann, author of the “Desiderata,” did not have, when he wrote the line, “as perennial as grass,” the Frog Grass in mind.

About half a decade of weeding this patch of ground outside our home makes me conversant about the one quality landscaping vendors will never extol in this variety: timidity.

Bashfulness does not sit well with gardeners, a pathological batch forever competing with the wildness of Nature to create the homeowner’s dream of the perfect lawn: immaculate, docile, and uniform.

We chose the Frog Grass because, aside from its comical name, its broad-leafed viridescence made us think of walking, barefoot, on a balmy summer day, cushioned by a swathe of springy, spongy grass as comfortable as an old shift of cotton worn for lazy laidback days.

The rule of grass: the more laidback the grass, the more wrought up the gardener.

Every time I uncover a patch of Frog Grass, already turning yellow-green, languishing under a mini-forest of soft-stemmed lily-like parvenus swarming over a spot where I went, the previous week, into hand-to-hand mortal combat with a couple of tough, rough, serrated blades, I wonder why the Frog Grass did not advance in the space I cleared for it, with all ten nicks-, cuts-, and callous-medalled fingers.

Frog or mouse? I have asked this grass that takes self-effacement to such an ungrasslike level.

We are competitive; nature makes us so. When I turned to gardening as an antidote for a day of theorizing, thinking I needed something concrete and earthy, I wasn’t prepared for cutthroat survival more in keeping with cafeterias attacked by lunch hordes than a patch of green.

The only way to win against alien encroachments—bombardments of undigested seeds encased in stools dropped by passing birds, pods of fecundity shaken free from the spikelets trembling in the wind, the vampire roots biding time after fragile stems are decapitated of their pale pastel heads—is to go down to the roots.

Yet, after I had perfected the weeding by uprooting starbursts of weeds that curtailed the diffident spread of the Frog Grass, my friend C. told me that I must not only leave unharmed this garden eyesore but also boil and drink—roots, leaves, and all, except flowers—this “miracle grass”.

Known also as goose grass, the Paragis is traditionally used as infusion or poultice in Asia and Africa to cure a variety of maladies, although no medical authority vouches for its safety and efficacy.

Growing in empty lots and sidewalk cracks, the goose grass makes the familiar strange: can I accept the uncultivated? Can I live with diversity? Will I embrace the wild? Nothing mouse-like about this grass.



(mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)


*First published in SunStar Cebu’s July 8, 2018 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”