Palmiera Cacatoos

Previously, our former house was called "Casa Natura", where we have rows of green small plants at every corner of the house. Moving into our new house, a different theme is planted in our brain (Miami desert), where Palm and Cactus shall be the main spotlight, besides green grassy pearl lawn. And we are now, proud to inform that, our new crib is officially called "Palmiera Cacatoos".

Read on what my guest writer cum travel partner has to say about our new lawn.

Green Grassy Lawn

Monday, May 21, 2012 by Sekupang.net

Source : http://sekupang.net/kromosomz/post/2012/05/21/Green-Grassy-Lawn.aspx  

 

From a desert-look sandy and rocky surface, Palmiera cacatoos has received an upgrade to its lawn, a 9-hour project undertook by Mr.S of Satkhira, south-western Bangladesh. Since he has quite a vast experience in landscaping, laying a lawn of about 600 square feet didn't seem to be a lot to him. He even worked alone, with an hour lunch break in between.

In cooking, before a chef starts to heat up the oil, he must have all the ingredients prepared. Onions and red chili getting chopped and beef or chicken meat are washed and nicely cut. I'm not really sure what exactly the chef is going to cook but it could be the masala beef or chicken although I don't list out any spices to be added. Similarly, before a project can commence, all equipment, tools, and raw materials must be prepared.

In this case, a hoe, spade, garden rake, and wheelbarrow were the tools needed and can be acquired from any hardware shops available. From the garden nursery, a lorry of topsoil (red color) and 300 patches of 2ft. x 1ft. grass segment to cover 600 square feet of space were bought.

Saturday morning, Mr.S was all ready to go with plenty of land ploughing to do. About 1.5 tonnes of topsoil was dumped on top of the existing lawn surface covering the entire uncemented area. That requires more than 4 hours before grass patches could be laid. The type of grass we chose is from the 'pearl' variety. Do we have plenty of pearl grass variations in Malaysia? Nope. It has similar characteristics as cow grass but with shorter and round leaves or blades. Therefore, it's cuter, slower growing, nicer to look at, and easier (and hopefully cheaper) to maintain due to its slow growth rate when compared to normal cowgrass.

At one corner, a hole was dug to make way for a 10-year old cactus tree. Although this thorny species originated from a barren land somewhere, we took it home and let it to live on a grassland. I mean it was bought from a nursery and see how it will do in this new environment. I like the shape of this kind of cactus and I hope I'll find another one just to make it a pair. The guy at the nursery once told that this cactus tree will produce an edible red fruit and it is now bearing one. I don't think I'll eat the fruit anyway though.

With the laying of the new lawn is completed, I'll wait another week to fertilize it. I'll also expect water bill increase once the grass being fertilized as it needs more water. Can I no more enjoy the complimentary 20 cubic meter of water each month after this?