turfless

Such delightful and compelling phrases: "burn of August" and "turfless peaks".

The narrator combines the unlettered fancy of a "real love-rhyme" with the geologically-informed reference to "turfless peaks."

Stumps of trees stuck up through the turfless soil, littered with stones, gravel and miscellaneous debris that piled up against the embankment walls like refuse in an abandoned municipal dump.

The dunes of the Sahara are an eight-hour drive away, but 19 miles outside Marrakesh the Agafay offers desert scenery and a turfless golf course at La Pause (www.lapause-marrakech.com).