Little house on the prairie

You may recall we experienced the hottest summer on record last summer. It was miserable in every way. And our beautiful green grass that had been planted a year earlier at great expense appeared dead as it sat in its little dust bowl. I was sad. 

But I am sad no more. That grass has made a stellar comeback. It was pleasantly long when I left for Japan, but when I got back from Japan, it was so long that it bent in the wind like prairie grass. They tend to go for the natural look here. Some of it was up to the top of Mimi's back (doesn't look like it in the photo, but trust me, it did).  

Yesterday, they began the days-long chore of cutting the grass -- with a weed eater, as usual. The footlong cuttings pile up on top of the lawn. If a good stiff wind doesn't come along to blow it away, it will probably kill some of the grass underneath. All sorts of grasshoppers, roly-poly's, mosquitoes and other pesky little insects and spiders have been pulled out of hiding.

Soon, it will rain a lot more (it's rainy season again) and the grass will grow exceedingly tall again, and every month or so they'll hire the old men with weed eaters to repeat the process of chopping the lawn. In the meantime, there is no neighborhood committee to tell them the grass is too long, and no one complains. That's just the way they roll in my (not so) little corner of the world.