Quackgrass

OK, so the grass in the barnyard that I naively thought was just an extra-strong, butch Canadian version of ordinary grass - isn't. Anyone who's had to deal with couch grass would have recognised it straight away, except that here the preferred term seems to be quackgrass and it is defined by the provincial government as "one of the most difficult weeds to control".

I'd never had to deal with couch grass before, so didn't realise that was what it was until tipped off by my aunt. So, far from being a native Canadian type of grass, this stuff is, like me, a European interloper. Quackgrass seems a ridiculous name for such an invasive and pesky plant, but perhaps it is a corruption of 'quickgrass', which is one of its other names. Actually I think the most appropriate of its many names is devil's grass. I'm fairly sure that sinful gardeners would spent their time in Hell dealing with an infinitely large field of the stuff.