And I had just the opposite rude awakening here, Alice. Foolishly assumed there might actually be soil here, but it is all sand, sand, sand.
Speaking of EE's gone wild, we have a huge garden of Xantho's growing in the ditch in front of a neighbor's house about half a block away. I'm sure she plants them so that she doesn't have to mow down the banks into the ditch. Every few years the utility guys come by and roust them out with a backhoe, and darned if they don't spring right back up the next summer . . . hey, they probably filter/clean the storm water really well! And they're really pretty too.