Bermuda grass: the myth, the reality

The plowed field stretches for miles across the prairie--well, really, only a couple of acres, but still-- packed with the roots and runners of Bermuda grass. We have rotating shifts manning the pitchforks, and have conquered only a few strips in this endless universe of dead and dying Bermuda grass.

All well-educated farmers are versed in the classics, and we have just uncovered the backstory of Sisyphus, that clever knave, King of Corinth, who, for a variety of sins, was doomed to endlessly roll a boulder up a mountain, only to have it roll down again.

The actual story has an angry Zeus pointing first to a field of Bermuda grass, and then to the boulder at the foot of the mountain, and saying to Sisyphus: "OK, you choose".

All farmers, at the mercy of the elements and developers and balky tractors, have an existentialist bent as well, and, like Camus' version of Sisyphus, there is some meaning to this life of one forkful after another, then bending over to pick out the lumpy strings of roots, then another forkful. Some is the Zen of no-thinking, and some of the sailing piled-up clouds, rimmed in glory, and what a blue is the sky, and that musky mushroomy earth. And the childish pleasure in just plain getting dirty.

Well, having pretty much touched on all of the no-faith traditions at this point, will salaam my way out. Shalom, on this Easter weekend.