Blade of grass

“ The blade under favorable circumstances reaches a growth usually of from three to five inches, but instead of being straight, or approximately so, it assumes a curled or waving shape, the grass itself becoming densely matted, and giving to the foot, when walking upon it, a sensation similar to that produced by stepping upon moss or the most costly of velvet carpets. ”

“ They bite off every blade of grass near the root, some seize it with their fore-legs, and twist and pull at it, while others run up to the top of the blade, and bend it down with their weight. It is not long before the great tree, as it must seem to the ants, comes toppling down. ”

“ Where grass has grown for some years it is conclusive evidence that there must be soil beneath, which, perhaps because of neglect, has ceased to supply the nourishment necessary to maintain the vigor of the sod growing upon it. As a consequence, weeds gradually creep in and finally crowd out every blade of grass. ”

“ This is the happy moment for amateurs to make their observations, for there is scarcely a blade of grass that does not contain one or more; and, if the branches of young trees are suddenly struck with a slight blow, a great number are detached, suspended at the end of their threads ”

“ When the last aqueduct shall have crumbled to pieces, the last airship fallen to the ground, the last blade of grass have died upon a dying earth, man, indomitable by his training in resistance to misery and pain, shall set this undiminished light of his eyes against the feeble glow of the sun. ”

“ In none of the various enclosures will you find a blade of grass growing. Such a thing as a lawn is quite unknown, and if grass tries to sprout it will be immediately scraped away with a hoe. In a very nice house you may find a few potted plants or shrubs in the enclosure before the sarang. ”

“ A Grass Napkin-Ring
is another thing that can be made by weaving or braiding the grasses.
Grass napkin-ring.
Select ten fine long blades of grass, divide them into two bunches of five each, put the root-ends together, and tie them as when making the hammock. Pin these two bunches to your knee about two inches apart, and taking one blade from each bunch, cross them as in [60] Fig. 72, the right-hand grass A on top of the left-hand grass B. Now bring the left-hand grass C over A, and the right-hand grass D under B and over C (Fig. 73) . ”

“ Thus, it takes but a minimum amount of wisdom to realize that a spear of grass, when trodden upon, is usually crushed to the earth; but, few reflect that the attempt is made by nature to restore the blade to its naturally upright position, and in doing so, requires a certain period of time to accomplish the task. ”

“ On dry hills a close tufted grass, with setaceous leaves, and in rich soils creeping and luxuriant with broad leaves. It is one of the few grasses that thrive in wet soils.
The chief points in the flat-leafed forms are the thin, dry leaves, rough on both sides and on the margins, with distinct raised ridges, and the base of the leaf narrowing suddenly into its insertion with the sheath, with no auricle, but with a long membranous ligule. The sheath not coloured, and the blade convolute. ”

“ As we shall see later the degree of inrolling of many grass leaves varies with circumstances.
In most others the blades are either flat (Figs. 8-12) , or more or less conduplicate on the mid-rib. The latter case occurs, for example, in grasses with flattened shoots, especially at the lower part of the blade—e.g. Lolium perenne, Dactylis, Glyceria, and some species of Poa, and the cross-section of the leaf below, just before it enters the sheath, is V-shaped. In Glyceria the leaf-bases may show yellow or brownish triangles. ”

“ Raffia for sewing.
Make a design in pencil, ink, or colored crayon.
Here the adaptability of material gathered about the home is illustrated. The tall, fine marsh grasses may be collected, spread out for three or four days where they will dry, and then utilized. You will find that almost every blade of this grass varies in color. The root end may be brown, while toward the tip the leaf shades into a light green, or white, or vice versa; this blending, when the grass is bunched, is most artistic.
Bunch a sufficient number of blades to make a coil a half or three-quarters of an inch in diameter. ”

“ Over these flooded ridges the green grass and oak boughs are spread, when the fields are again plowed and the material worked into the wet soil. If this working is not completely successful men enter the fields and tramp the surface until every twig and blade is submerged. ”

“ It is harder for you to bend a grass blade than for him to bend three iron rails one atop the other. Three or a hundred, it is all the same to him. It is more difficult for you to raise a cup of water to your lips than for him to raise a sea of water, to shake it up, to lift the dregs thereof and to cast them out upon the shore ”

“ A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak; ”

“ The delicacy and beauty of thought or feeling is so extreme that it cannot be inked in; it is like the green and blue of field and sky, of veronica flower and grass blade, which in their own existence throw light and beauty on each other, but in artificial colours repel. ”

“ It is most beautifully made, and certainly surpasses vessels of wood or clay in one respect; namely, that it will bear very rough treatment without breaking. The mode of weaving it is peculiarly intricate. A vast amount of grass is employed in its construction, the work is very close, and the ends of the innumerable grass blades are so neatly woven into the fabric as scarcely to be distinguishable. ”

“ Hid as yet within the sheath are those sturdy heads of cocks-foot grass which, later in the summer, will bring into the silence of the hills gangs of grass-seeders, broad-hatted, bent of back, sickle in hand—owing to the slope and surface, machinery is worthless here—to gather in its harvest. ”

“ A dull grey expanse of leaden cloud shut out the blue heaven, a hard black frost pinched up the ground, the blades of grass stood stiff and rugged on the frozen soil, and vague grey mists lay in all the hollows of the ground. ”

“ Trees, some of them fifty to seventy-five feet high, were bent to the ground and buried like grass, whole groves vanishing as if the forest had been cleared away, leaving not a branch or needle visible until the spring thaw. Then the more elastic undamaged saplings rose again, aided by the wind, some reaching a nearly erect attitude, others remaining more or less bent, while those with broken backs endeavored to specialize a side branch below the break and make a leader of it to form a new axis of development. ”

“ The undergrowth grew denser and more fantastic; the murmur filled out, increased and resolved itself into a sound of falling water that ever took shape, and volume, and depth, till its crash shook the ground at our feet. Then in a moment a white blaze of sky came at us through the trunks, and we burst through the fringe of the wood to find ourselves facing the opposite side of a long cleft in the mountain and the blade's edge of a roaring cataract. ”

“ Long lines of stone wall still separate the mowing land from the pasturage; and scattered over the fields are heaps of boulders, thrown together thus to get them out of the grass’s way. About the edges of every pile, and sometimes through the midst, have sprung up a few shrubs,—shad bushes, cherries, willows, and the like. ”

“ The "Transfiguration" is finished with great minuteness and detail, the weeds and blades of grass in the foreground being as distinct as if they were growing in a natural soil. A partly decayed stick of wood with the bark is likewise given in close imitation of nature. ”

“ And a noble grass it is, with its stems as thick as one’s wrist, tillering out below in bold curves over the well-hoed dark soil, and its broad bright leaves falling and folding above in curves as bold as those of the stems: handsome enough thus, but more handsome still, I am told, when the ‘arrow,’ as the flower is called, spreads over the cane-piece a purple haze, which flickers in long shining waves before the breeze. One only fault it has; that, from the luxuriance of its growth, no wind can pass through it; and that therefore the heat of a cane-field trace is utterly stifling. ”

“ No breath stirred strong enough to lift the petals of the gorse-blossoms by the wall, or rustle the wayside plants. The only movement came from a field of long grass on the slope—one of the pattern of fields, newly-ploughed, short-turfed, or misted with green from the three-weeks-old corn springing a few inches high, a pattern that lay like a coverlet drawn over the rounded flank of the hill. And over that one field movement was busy—the rank grass was exactly the length, density, texture, to respond to what imperceptible breath there was, and that grass only. ”

“ Gullies of chalk and ground strewn with stones succeed the even surface of the belt of sand, and in turn give way to the covering of burnt grass which clothes the deep slope of the great sweeping base, and encircles the fabric with a continuous stretch of ochre, extending up the higher seams. Mile after mile we rode at easy paces over the parched turf and the cracking soil. ”

“ Slender grasses, branched round about with slenderer boughs, each tipped with pollen and rising in tiers cone-shaped—too delicate to grow tall—cluster at the base of the mound. They dare not grow tall or the wind would snap them. A great grass, stout and thick, rises three feet by the hedge, with a head another foot nearly, very green and strong and bold, lifting itself right up to you; you must say, "What a fine grass!" Grasses whose awns succeed each other alternately ”

“ I sat on the short sweet grass, which springs upon the rich loam of fallen leaves the moment sunlight is admitted into the heart of a bush. No one plants it; probably the birds carry the seeds; yet it grows freely after a clearing has been made. Nature lays down a green sward directly on the rich virgin mould, and sets to work besides to cover up the unsightly stems and holes of the fallen timber with luxuriant tufts of a species of hart's-tongue fern, which grows almost as freely as an orchid on decayed timber. ”

“ In the winter and spring, if it rain, things are better; a little thin grass appears, single blades which last only a week or two, and the grey-brown tufts of sticks, which are the remains of last year’s grass hummocks, put forth scanty leaves and long wiry stems, a little less dry than those they spring from. ”

“ A wood is trying to grow up on the grassland. If left alone, an oak or beech forest would, after many years, spread over all our grass pastures and hay-fields. These tall herbs are the pioneers, and the briers and brambles are its advanced guard. ”

“ A well-known custom is to rise early and walk exactly one hundred paces into a grass-field without turning the head; then to pluck one hundred blades of grass, which must be carefully taken home. The grass is put into a pot of water and thoroughly boiled. ”

“ The grass is so vividly green that it seems as if the greenness sprang away from the blades; as we draw near to it we see that it is not all matted together and interwoven, as is our grass, but is composed of separate blades, each one apart and upright, all together standing like a regiment of soldiers. ”

“ The roofs of houses are carried to vast distances from their walls, which are beat to the ground, burying their inhabitants under them. Large trees are torn up by the roots, and huge branches shivered off, and driven through the air in every direction with immense velocity. Every tree and shrub that withstands the shock is stripped [Pg 512] of its boughs and foliage; plants and grass are laid flat on the earth ”

“ When approached it becomes silent, and dropping to the ground conceals itself in the grass. Under a cardoon-bush or tussock of grass it scoops out a slight hollow in the ground, and builds over this a dome of fine dry grass, leaving a small aperture arched like the door of a baker’s oven. ”

“ All day long they remain hidden close to the earth, but at the appointed hour of evening they will mount the blades of grass as high as they will bear them, turn up the ends of their tails, and display a splendour more steady and beautiful than either gas or camphine. ”

“ Looking down when I walked in the fields the young spring grass could be seen thrusting up its blades among the old and dead, but at a distance of a few yards these delicate living green threads were invisible. ”

“ It has not lost itself in the mazes of the grass forest. It turns directly towards the road with an unerring judgment. There are many obstacles to overcome. Pebbles, pellets of earth, bits of wood, obtruding rootlets, or bent-down spears of grass block up or hinder the way. ”

“ Grass and box cling to all the slopes; pines and spruces shoot upward wherever they have won footholds. They are not great peaks that we see yet, nor anything above the snow level; but the mountains in view, with their faces of rock, their massive flanks of green, are imposing notwithstanding. Far below, the breack has just come in sight, its forward route meeting mine some distance ahead. ”

“ Sometimes in such arid dry countries, a small spring of water will form around itself a refreshing oasis of greenery surrounded everywhere by dreary thorn-scrub or monotonous sand. All the plants in such a spot have their own special work to do: the graceful trees which shade the spring, the green mosses on the stones, the fresh grass and bright flowers or waving reeds, are all associated in a common work. They protect and shelter each other; their dead leaves are used to form soil; their roots explore and break up the ground. ”