Grama Bats Her Eyelashes

When we first moved into this house, we experimented with planting a couple of lawn circles of native buffalo grass and blue grama. The buffalo grass was sod and the blue grama, Bouteloua gracilis, was seeded to fill in the spaces.

Since then, we've done some major remodeling in the front garden, getting rid of one of the circles. But one circle of buffalo-grama remains to date, and it does relatively well on its own.

There are a couple of blue grama plants that have grown this year to substantial size (meaning about 6 inches high) and they are now sporting their lovely eyelash-like seed heads. Some people compare them to little flags, but I think they are more seductive than that, especially when they are spent and curled over.

Blue grama is a gorgeous little native grass, that is particularly difficult to capture on camera in my yard with all of its crazy textures (sorry, squint hard and you can make it out in the foreground above). I'm hoping that it will spread. Either that, or I'm going to plant more of them in strategic places that capture the sun's light. A full lawn of this grass would be absolutely wonderful, but we don't have the right conditions for that anymore.