Who Killed the Grass?--A Mystery

“Morning, Harold,” I said waving to our 86 year-old neighbor as he stood in his driveway.

“Hello,” he said running a hand over his bald head.

“Your lawn is looking… special,” I said gazing at the sterile brown earth in front of his house. 

“I don't need a green yard.”

“Then why are you watering your grass?”

It sounded crazy and it looked insane but Harold’s high-tech, built-in sprinkler system was dousing his dead turf with tsunami-sized amounts of water.  Forget “rotten in Denmark”, something was indeed rotten in the state of my neighbor’s lawn.   

Water was supposed to help grass grow but that wasn’t the case for Harold’s.  In fact viewing his dead lawn was so sad for plant lovers, Shakespeare could have written a tragic play about it.  Its death was so horrific for suburbanites, Stephen King could have written a horror story about it.  Its cause of death was so M is for Mysterious, Sue Grafton could have written a Kinsey Millhone alphabet mystery about it.  But since all those writers were dead, busy or otherwise occupied, I wrote this blog post about it.  Yes, I would get to the bottom of the (duhn-duhn) Mystery of Who Killed the Grass.

“Harold,” I said putting a hand on his shoulder.  “Turn off your sprinklers, your lawn is dead.”

“It’s not,” he said shrugging me off.

“It’s brown.”

“It’s winter!  Everything’s brown in the winter.”

“My lawn is green—” before I could finish he'd turned on his heel and disappeared into his garage.

When death happened to your own lawn, it was hard to accept.  Harold was in a state of denial but that would not stop my investigation.

Just then a black pickup truck arrived hauling a rake, a lawn mower and countless kitchen sinks.  Out of the cab slid a mustachioed man in a plaid shirt and straw hat.  Ah-hah!  I clapped my hands.  I’d found the killer! 

“Excuse me,” I said sprinting toward the mustachioed man.  “But I’ve seen you loitering around these parts.”

“I’m the gardener for Mr. Harold,” he said unloading a trash bin.

“You’re also responsible for… killing his grass!”

“No,” he gasped.

“Yes!"  I said peering at his face.  “Because killers always have mustaches!"  

“Not Hercule Poirot,” said the Gardener.  “Or Tom Selleck as Magnum P.I. or Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone or Tom Selleck as anything actual—”

“Stop!” I said.  This clever killer was trying to throw me off his tail by appealing to my love of Agatha Christie and classic TV shows of the 1980s.  Well I wasn't born yesterday. 

“All those men were good guy investigators and,” the Gardener continued, “had mustaches.” 

Hmmm.  He had made an astute point; astute enough to make me think I had been born yesterday.

I returned to my own property to examine the facts and drink a latte.  Not necessarily in that order.  Fact: Harold’s lawn was dead.  Fact: The Gardener didn’t do it.  Fact: What was that rotten smell?

I rushed outside to see Harold’s lawn covered in a layer of dark brown.

“Your grass stinks, Harold!”

“Bull crap,” he said.

“Then your nose is broken because—”

“What you smell is bull crap.  Bull crap mulch.  I use it every year,” he said pointing to his yard.

“That’s what killed your lawn!” I shrieked.

Harold shook his head then proceeded to tell me that mulch made from bull crap was often used in Los Angeles because 1) It was organic; 2) A fertilizer rich in nitrogen, potassium, calcium and zinc; and 3) Hollywood was full of it.  

I checked with other long-term Angelenos and their annual fertilizer of choice was… bull crap. 

If B.S. couldn’t kill Harold’s grass, who or what did?  Leaning against my car I stared at his dead lawn.  I was still there when I saw Harold partake in the common water conservation practice embraced by L.A.'s hippies: he parked his car on the lawn, soaped his vehicle and washed it clean. 

“That's what killed your lawn!” 

“I always wash my car like this,” Harold huffed.  

“But have you always used this soap that's biodegradable and phosphate-free?”  I said stabbing the label with my index finger. 

“I changed soaps this year.”

“When did your lawn die?”

“Last year—”

Ah-hah!  Ah-HAH!  "Being half-green killed your lawn!”

His head drooped to contemplate his formerly green patch of suburban idyll.

 “… My lawn is dead,” he sniffed. 

“I know,” I nodded.

“I killed it—by accident.”

“I know.”

“I tried so hard to make it grow.”

“I know,” I put my hand on his shoulder.  This time Harold didn’t shrug me off but accepted my sympathy.  We stood in silence over the corpse.  A good murder investigator never gloats. 

Back at my office, I closed the file then… did a little dance.  I did it, uh-huh, I figured it out!  I solved the Mystery of Who Killed the Grass!  Yes!  Uh-huh, I rock, oh yeah!

Losing Lavender

“Summertime,” I said reclining on the outdoor lounger.

“Hmm,” Mr. Wonderful said from his garden chair.

“Look at our geraniums, the bird of paradise, the rosemary—” 

“Hmm.”

“Everything’s gorgeous and blooming!”

“Not the dead lavender.”

“What?!”

I first experienced lavender traveling through the South of France with Mr. Wonderful.  Together we witnessed the endless fields blanketing the region in a purple haze and lending the air a sweetly clean fragrance.  It was there that we fell in love… with lavender.  For our honeymoon we returned to the South of France to confirm our love… for lavender.  After spending those blissful weeks together we knew it would be a lifetime love affair…with lavender.

Lucky for us Southern California’s climate was similar to that of the South of France, minus the French snobs.  Instead we had Hollywood OMG wanna-bes.  Life's full of trade-offs. 

Horticulturalists call our SoCal region “Lavender and Lazy”, which comes from their planting recommendations: 1) You plant lavender; 2) You do nothing to it ever again.  Lazy is me!  What a fun garden plan!  Vive la lavande!  After we bought The House I ripped out a whole garden bed and replanted it with lavender—an entire bed of only lavender.  Just sniffing the air transported me back to our honeymoon where we fell madly in love…with lavender. 

The plants grew in the spring and thrived until June, which is exactly when we added one more lavender plant to the bed.  That lone plant came from the nursery with some brown stems on it.  Mr. Wonderful said the brown would go away with some watering.  By August the brown stems had overtaken the entire loner plant, and spread to six others transforming them into tumbleweed skeletons.  Worst of all was that the brown was creeping toward our remaining 10 healthy plants.

OMG.  I needed a fix.  Fast. 

Online I found websites dedicated to the plant, like Lavenders-B-Us.com, which had an active community of lavender lovers who posted hourly updates about their purple plants with Instagram photos.  When I explained my dead situation and how it was spreading, the site’s posters all said the same thing, “You’re watering too much.”

“Impossible”, I said under my breath then read on—

“Maine summers are moist—”  Maine?!  I stopped in my tracks.  Maine’s rainy climate is ideal for growing rocks, in fact some of the finest rocks in North America are grown there.  But not lavender.  Scouring the website I noticed that everyone posting on Lavenders-B-Us resided along the Atlantic coast where a “Summer” in Maine was like the wettest winter in Southern California.  And a “Winter” in Maine was a dark, cold, frightful nightmare.  There’s a reason Stephen King lived and wrote in Maine and not sunny southern California. 

After another Google search I found a California gardener’s website specifically for southern California lavender.  In answer to my problem every gluten-free person posting on that site said the same thing, “You’re watering too little.” 

“Impossible,” I said biting into my gluten-free hummus pita-wrap sandwich. 

“Southern California summers are hot—”  I know but they are the same type of dry, hot summers that have been happening in the Mediterranean region for thousands of years.  Watering too little?  When was the last time anyone read a story of Zeus or Hercules where they watered their lavender?  How about in The Iliad or The Odyssey—neither one mentioned watering lavender because lavender was ideally suited to the bone dry, hot summers Italy, Greece and Turkey have known since before Zeus, Homer or Jesus ever picked up a garden trowel.

Besides Mr. Wonderful and I used a drip hose on the lavender.  They got the water they needed. 

No, another problem was afflicting my lavender and the answer originated with one root.  The loner plant we brought home from the nursery had been tainted with a virus condition called “Wilt”, which was described as a “rapid wilting, browning and dying to lavender plants during the month of August.”  The only method to deal with Wilt was to remove the infected plants, the soil surrounding them and burn them.

Who said planting lavender was lazy?  Or gardening was fun?

This week I put on my gloves, gripped the shovel and removed the (now) 12 infected plants plus the surrounding soil.  Without them my lavender garden resembled a scorched volcano site; not the frolicking grounds of Greek gods, mythological heroes or French snobs. 

What I would give to see a French snob in my garden!

Not all love stories end happily.  I fell in love with lavender and… it broke my heart.  OMG.