In my June 2 post about restoring our Santa Fe yard with native plants, about ten days had passed since sowing a dozen pounds of grass and wildflower seed, and the first tiny sprouts were beginning to appear.
Those first shoots, alas, were nothing I had planted; they were purslane (Portulaca oleracea). Purslane is an amazing grow-anywhere plant, a succulent brought by Europeans to provide salad greens in wintertime (it dries nicely). When it grew bigger I sampled it—what a great taste! Slightly salty, with a definitely satisfying crunch. And more omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy vegetable. Any!
I didn't want my yard covered in purslane, but yards have their own ideas, so purslane took over. Millions of sprouts. Later I was grateful for the ground cover—holding down the dust through a dry June. Purslane knows its job. The native grasses, blue grama and buffalograss, are warm-season grasses, which means that in this cool-ish spring they waited a long time, until mid-June, for the soil to get toasty before they germinated. When they did sprout, they had to pick their way skyward through purslane.
Native grasses can hold their own, so I held off weeding.
By the end of June, after watering twice a day for three weeks then once a day after that, I could see honest-to-goodness patches of grass where before there had been none.
Rainwater truly is better for your yard, and a big reason is that it is not chlorinated. Chlorinated tap water kills the microbes in the soil for 24–48 hours after watering, and it possibly also disturbs the balance of beneficial microbes in the human gut.
What would a view of the yard be without my constant companion, Bodhi the Chief Yard Patrol and Squirrel Chaser? He hates the camera, so when he saw me fiddling with it he turned his face studiously away.