‘That’s monte’, the local Costa Rican grass guy says in answer to the offering my wife gingerly holds before his expert eye. ‘You’ve got to get rid of all of that.’
Anybody who knows anything about grass in Costa Rica knows about monte, the fearsome Spanish abbreviation for something like ‘mountain weed’. The word is pronounced with a disdainful curl of the lip and a respectful fear in the eye. Monte is not to be fooled with. A worthy enemy.
Planting grass in a Costa Rican backyard is a Quixote’s tale, a horticultural tilting at windmills, the errand of fools. Everything grows in this rich volcanic soil, this warm sun, this good earth. The good and the bad spring forth with relish. ‘So many mangos that they’ve rotted …’, ‘Too many avocados to give away …’, ‘Not enough time to spray for fungus …’. These are the slogans of defeat that hang about my checkered history as an urban farmer in this humble paradise of backyard garden that breaks the monotony of a city’s sprawl.
Everything grows under Costa Rican foot. Everything, it would seem, except grass. Five months of drought crack the ground which grass in other climes would carpet. Seven months of rain soak it beyond the tolerance of slender blades. While fruit trees and vegetable stalks make their relentless climb towards the sun and the rain, grass remains an alien presence, a fine idea for somewhere else. Monte grows where grass, by itself, cannot.
Something perversely stubborn in a man’s heart makes him long for grass in a place like this. Local grass guys cater to that instinct, dispensing sage advice and practical wisdom with an air of omniscience and dirt beneath their fingernails. You can’t do much about the sun and the rain, they’ll tell you, when you seek their audience. But monte? The grass guy glances askance at the green villain in my wife’s extended hand. ‘You’ve got to get rid of that …’
I did battle just this morning with a square meter of monte.
Its low profile calls no attention to itself. Monte’s first line of defense is to pass unnoticed. I thought it was cheap, wild grass until my wife broke my ignorance one sunny afternoon and named the enemy. Now, upon bent-knee inspection, I have come to know my foe. Monte arms itself with a small, hair-like bristle which sticks in the finger to irritate rather than to cause real pain. It is just enough to make you leave it alone. Only those who make a firm decision to pass this spiny barricade need trouble monte’s future. It’s so easy just to let it grow.
Once attacked, monte’s survival tactics become sophisticated. Monte’s vulnerable heart is rarely where you think. As one stoops to pluck an offending stalk, a discovery awaits: the appearance of weedy life is a feint, a ruse, a decoy. Instead, you trace the winding stalk to its root, now inches away, a shady path covered by monte’s totalitarian leaves which blot out all other life, claiming all sun and all rain and all space for itself. Monte wants it all, but you were not supposed to know.
No special strength is needed to defeat this green usurper, for monte is clever, not strong. Monte’s only enemies are attention and persistence.
Once discovered, monte’s root gives way with a satisfying pop, leaving where it once reigned rich, earthy space. Fruitful life is free—its siege now ended—to burst forth. Even grass begins its contented life where monte once claimed everything.
The Hebrew prophets had a strange familiarity with monte’s ancient cousin. Shamiyr vashayit—‘thorn and brier’—Isaiah loved to call it with poignant sadness. Judah’s monte was, for this prophetic poet, a visible sign that no one was home, that no hoe busied itself over that field, that no child would grow strong on grain from the place, no heart would be gladdened by the wine of an abandoned vineyard. The deathful green of thorn and brier was the end of the line, the silent finale, the debris of exile, unless that plot should know again the soiled hand of an intent, persistent Vinedresser.
The Galilean preacher whom his followers would soon call ‘Lord’ knew too the quiet tragedy of monte. ‘A farmer went out to sow his soil’, he once told his sunburnt listeners when sensible folk had already returned to their shady homes. ‘Some fell on the path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on the rock and, as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture.’
‘And some …’, Jesus went on with his now familiar story, ‘… some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it.’
Grass does not cry out when choked. Vineyards do not groan as they turn to brush. Theirs is a noiseless death. Passersby, backyard amateurs, and their self-absorbed neighbors rarely notice. Yet it is a death most real.
Isaiah knew the choking grip of a chosen nation’s stubborn greed. Jesus’ stories colored in the asphyxiating sprawl of ‘the cares and riches and pleasures of life’. I, for my part, learn to dirty my knees with the intentional, persistent labor of tracing monte back to its root, and then firmly tug it to death.
Monte is not strong. It is clever.
Monte cedes its space to careful, measured, occasionally irritated plucking. It is defenseless before steadiness, vulnerable to the gradual onslaught of dirty, determined fingers. Monte is not invincible. It is a paper tiger, the conqueror of the distracted but the victim of the attentive and the persistent.
Monte’s wake is a celebration. Where monte once ruled, grass unfurls its soft carpet to bare feet. Children are nourished. Hearts grow glad.
Canter Bridge 
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