The calendar may say it’s a holiday, but all around the house, In The Yard, there’s “work going on” today: steadily, indifferently, variously, in dead earnest.
The summer is drying out: hot, very little rain, parched. Yet there must be underground currents here, because we don’t water much, still most stuff remains green.
To the east, halfway through hurricane season, the Atlantic is spookily quiet; two storms are on the map — Earl and Danielle, but they are swirling far out, aimless and unlikely to bother any land mass. Then to the west, we have large forests, and something like 60 wildfires are burning, but the nearest of those is more than half a continent away.
in the meantime, there have been some very good regional peaches and not-so regional (Washington state) cherries.
Given this deceptively normal-looking larger backdrop, the annual struggle In The Yard, between the Morning Glories and everything else is about as much drama as we can claim.
It used to be more exciting In The Yard. For several years the city’s yard cops tacked citations on our door, telling us our yard was way too unruly, not sufficiently square or trim or bourgeois for local regulations. But the Fair Wendy went to bat for us, arguing (backed up by a thick notebook/photo album, with lots of Latin names), that one person’s weeds were another person’s cherished free-range “home meadow.” They held off on imposing fines, but there was more to come. A true “grass roots” movement is underway, with people ditching the pre-astroturf for lots of bushes and flowers and stuff bees and other critters like. Last spring we spent a few hours driving around the ‘hood and we soon discovered at least a dozen “wild yards,” recognizable but all different, within a mile or so radius of our small house.
So, what was The Man gonna do? Confiscate our garden gloves and lock us all up? Really, your excellencies, compared to the folks who swagger in the streets waving their bare nekkid AR-15s around in front of Gawd and everybody, we’re much less a danger to civilization. All we want to groom is our postage stamp gardens. And when “We say ‘Gay,'” we might also be talking about mums or peonies, fer pity sake.
But anyway, the heat seems to have backed off; summer’s just about over and there have been no more citations, and the only serious clashes seem to be silent struggles between the Morning Glories and everything else they try to strangle.
But I just noticed today that there are some areas In The Yard where there are no MGs.
Yet why not? What or which (or whom?) is holding the MGs back? Some difference in the soil? Another rootweb system pushing back without showing above ground? Some anonymous bug? (As to insects, which I don’t much follow, their disappearance is their most visible feature this summer.)
This will soon be the second autumn with no sign of the black & yellow spiders who colonized the southern wall of the house. They always looked vigorous enough, and we didn’t use any insecticides.
But they’re gone, along with the honeybees and others, including most of the mosquitoes, whom I do not miss.
Even on this comparatively tiny scale, I continue to get hints at how much in this most familiar quarter acre is completely unknown to me. Meantime, I continue to fall for their obvious late season propaganda of flowers, which by tradition will be followed by turning leaves and all that, to distract us while the cold sneaks back.
I just love this column (and just about everything you post). I let the weeds have full reign in my little flower garden the summer (in the Chicago suburbs), and the profusion of unfamiliar blooms and leaves and tendrils added much interest to the landscape. I’m hoping the pollinators enjoyed the variety.
Thanks, Barbara. Evidently there’s a “grass roots” movement spreading rapidly around here. We used to get citations from the city “yard cops” each summer because our turf was not square and trim & grassily bourgeois enough. But the Fair Wendy went to bat for us last year, arguing that one person’s weed was another’s cherished free range “home meadow.” This summer we drove around the ‘hood one day and voilá! There were about a dozen more yards like ours to see, not “organized” as far as we know, but right there, blooming buck nekkid in front of Gawd & Everybody. But the yard cops have left us alone so far. (After all, as far as threats to public order go, we don’t amount to much beside the folks who gotta show off their AR-15s everywhere. But maybe I should get one of those yellow snake flags and change the motto to, “Don’t Tread On My Zinnias! (But stomping the morning glories is okay).”
Hooray for Wendy! And thanks for being funny when you write!
I do think there is indeed a movement underway. My husband loves his grass (the kind that grows in the yard), but seems willing to let me pursue some wildness among the flowers and vegetables without complaint. I’ve also noticed that some Unitarian friends in Evanston are creating pocket-sized prairies lately.