“You have to wade through these knee-high grasses just to get to the garden. It’s disgusting. Un-American. And where’s the irrigation system?”

Alkali sacaton, Sporobolus airoides, catching the first sunlight, rising out of a sea of blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis), in the part of the new lawn I put in last year. It could have been a better photograph but some of us just woke up.