Winds Turn Tract Into Tumbleweed Territory

Tumbleweeds press up against P. J. Marcy’s front windows like eager solicitors, piled so high she can’t see her front lawn.

Neighbor Cassandra Foster’s 40-foot pool is choked with dozens of the waterlogged, prickly bushes. Throughout the neighborhood, mounds of tumbleweeds stand at attention curbside, lumped on top of one another like litters of sleeping kittens.

It’s not the Wild West; it’s the wild winds.

Over the weekend, powerful winds gusting up to 85 mph combed a fallow agricultural field that lies parallel to Sierra Mesa Drive, yanking hundreds of plants out of the ground and sending them into this neighborhood north of Los Posas Road.

It’s such an unusual sight that it’s almost comical: cars dwarfed by the bushes, frontyards re-landscaped in a cloud of brown shrubs that reach to the eaves of suburban homes.

“It’s funny, but it’s not so funny,” said Marcy, looking out her kitchen window at the tumbleweeds, which are technically Russian thistles.

Before the high winds, the tumbleweeds were growing in an 80-acre field owned by Pardee Construction Co., which is building a 265-home development on the site. Until July 1995, strawberries grew in the field.

Without the crops, the Russian thistles quickly took over the acreage, growing so rapidly that they went from small sprigs to giant bushes within a matter of months. As summer passed, they died, turning into dry twigs held in the ground by only a small root.

Neighbors say Pardee should have been cleaning them up before the fierce winds set in.

“It was pretty irresponsible of them not to have harvested them earlier,” Foster said, picking her way through her clogged lawn with her 3-month-old baby Michaela against her shoulder. “It’s just arrogance on their part.”

She pointed out her Christmas tree, which she and her husband purchased last week, that was propped against a wall in their yard. Only the top two feet of the tree poked out from a jumble of tumbleweeds. “We can’t get to it,” Foster said.

But John Osgood, an assistant vice president for Pardee, said the company had no way of knowing that the plants were going to take over the neighborhood. He said Pardee is waiting for a grading permit, which company officials expect to receive any day now.

Standing in Todd Terres’ backyard on Vista Coto Verde, Osgood said he was amazed by the mass of tumbleweeds.

“This is an act of God that we basically had no control of,” he said.