Easter is coming and you know what that means: hard-boiled eggs,
chocolate bunnies, and Easter grass. Lots and lots of Easter
grass.
And by that I don’t mean the kind that comes from wheat seed
that you grow in a container on you kitchen sink.
Easter is coming and you know what that means: hard-boiled eggs, chocolate bunnies, and Easter grass. Lots and lots of Easter grass.
And by that I don’t mean the kind that comes from wheat seed that you grow in a container on you kitchen sink. Nooooo. I mean the cellophane kind that comes in the bag that you get in the holiday section of the grocery store.
Of course, no one sets out to buy a ton of plastic Easter grass. Me, I usually buy a bag or two, just enough to fill my children’s baskets. But let me warn you now, the funny thing about Easter grass is as soon as it’s let out of the bag and in to the fresh air, it expands. And what you had thought, just moments ago, was exactly enough to fill up one basket, maybe two, can now easily cover most of Rhode Island.
If you think I’m exaggerating, just ask my friend Shirley.
She naively left an open bag of Floppy’s purple Easter grass on her kitchen table and went to change the laundry. When she came back, only five minutes later, it had worked it’s into the family room and over the recliner and was heading down the hallway after the cat.
“I’m not sure, but I think it wanted to take over the children’s room,” she said to me one day over coffee. “But I managed to corral it in the linen closet with a broom.”
And don’t think for one minute that you can solve anything by stuffing all of the loose grass back into its original bag and putting on a twist tie. Any fool knows that, no matter how hard you push and squeeze and beg, it won’t fit back in.
Sure, you can always try to throw it away immediately after Easter. But this, my friends, usually doesn’t work either. In fact last year I dumped all of our leftover Easter grass in the garbage can, jammed on the lid, and immediately wheeled it to the curb. Days later, I found suspicious purple strands sticking out of the washing machine, lying on top of the television set, waiting next to the shower, and tucked underneath the organic lettuce in the crisper.
I ask you, how do you explain that?
It’s astonishing, really, that we live in a society that can clone sheep and send a man to the moon but can’t figure out how to control Easter grass.
Naturally, you could always bypass the whole issue by growing real Easter grass from rye seed. But that would just bring up a whole new set of problems, the kind which that would make worrying about a little extra plastic grass in your home seem, well, silly.
Besides, there are lots of practical uses for it, like, say, packing material or hair on paper bag puppets. Some people even stuff the toes of their good pumps with it or, in some cases, use it as extra attic insulation. Once, my friend Julie even used it to make pom-poms for her daughter who wanted to be a cheerleader for Halloween.
The other nice thing about plastic Easter grass is that, just when you’ve grow tired and weary of picking it up, it will mysteriously disappear.
But don’t get your hopes up. It would be a stretch to say that it’s gone for good. In fact, my theory is that it doesn’t really go away at all, it merely hibernates in the walls for a few months until it’s time to reappear disguised as tinsel.
Trust me, crazier things have happened.
