Can't Keep a Good Grass Down

The gutter outside my house was recently re-paved.  A fresh new black swath of asphalt over everything.  Now, I'm not complaining -- it needed it!  The concrete gutter hadn't been tended to in .. well, decades, from the look of it.



This isn't your normal street-height gutter -- it's a paved channel, nominally a few inches lower than the road.  Big chunks of the bottom were missing, creating 10-inch-deep chasms which swallowed the ankles and tires of the unwary.  Parallel parkers frequently ended up with a wheel in the gutter.  A friend came to visit once, pulled too close to a particularly deep portion of the Grand Canyon, and couldn't get back out.  We tried to build a ramp, but I didn't have enough miscellaneous timber in my shed.  A passerby volunteered to help, and returned with lumber that he'd borrowed from a neighbor.  My favorite incident involved a tow truck which got stuck there for days after accidentally backing into the chasm.



So, at long last, a new gutter.  A wide, smooth dip at the side of the road, easy to walk through and to park next to without fear of maroonment.  Amusingly, though, only a cursory attempt to clear the area to be paved was made, and small clumps of grass were left.  Small clumps of grass tend to become large clumps of grass.  It is their wont.  As I walked home today, I noticed this idyllic urban watering hole.  I imagine weed whackers and skateboards congregating for a drink from the coursing water during a light rain.