"If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower."
- The Talking Heads
When we want time outside, we typically drive or ride to the park. Pre-Ivan, we'd spend more time in the front yard, too. It's tamer, and there's a porch. But now he crawls down to the street in front, and this isolation is forcing me to deal with the back yard.
I have a frustrated relationship with this little piece of land that we "own," the part not taken up by the house. My yard is a mess o' weeds. There's no landscaping. No view. Sounds right now:
- dogs barking
- sirens
- freeway
- wind in the trees.
We have no play structures or outside toys, except for this cozy coupe, red plastic faded to pink. Few bits of rusty garbage. Weeds grown to weed trees.
And yet. And yet. The sun is shining. And the sun warms everything, warms my head. I've only seen it though windows for a couple of weeks, there's a point where sitting in the sun, no matter what the setting, is all you need. And Ivan doesn't care how old the coupe is, he'll sit in it, opening and shutting the door for half an hour.
I have a clothesline and it makes me happy. "If there is anything more virtuous than cloth diapers drying in the sun, I haven't found it," says my friend Eleanor. Indeed!
There's a dying garden in the corner of the yard. This year I got:
a little spinach
a lot of chard
a little cilantro
some tomatoes
volunteer acorn squash
a little lettuce
2 volunteer ornamental mini-pumpkins
and lots of wild dandelion greens and green onions.
Not much by good urban homesteading standards, but a miracle by my non-gardener, move 20 times in 15 years standards.
Oh and there's a patch of wild black raspberries that haven't produced yet, maybe next year. Maxine thinks we should try for a pumpkin patch next year. OK seeds, I'll throw you down, you do the rest.
My compost method is called "throw kitchen scraps in the yard willy-nilly." Mixture of that, and once in awhile piling dead leaves on said scrap pile on purpose. The good thing (how I see it anyway) is that I've changed the location of willy-nilly compost pile so many times, I figure the yard is relatively fertile and healthy, should a real gardener move in here one day.
My weedy yard is still more beautiful than a Chem Lawn.
I could use more faded plastic toys though. Really. We do have a new-to-us fire pit we haven't used yet. Right now its upside-down in the grass and Ivan's dancing on it.
And I must acknowledge, even though all our trees are weed trees, the neighbors have an Oak which is dark flame orange right now with flecks of gold. The autumn wind in it is a symphony which rises from the highway/siren sounds. If this were a musical composition, it wouldn't make sense.
