Springing

I'm just not good at posts with pictures; waiting to get pictures of things means the things don't get posted. So here's a post with a lot of text instead.

 I have two big outdoor goals this year: to no longer need to mow the front slope, and to encourage more pollinators to hang out here. I've been working on both of them in the last few weeks! Saturday of last week was the annual King Conservation District native plant sale. I preordered a few things, and then went down there with H so we could both buy some stuff in the walk-up sale too. Now, looking at the prices on the website, I thought "well, that's a little high but reasonable," and ordered two blue elderberries and one mock orange. Then we got to the sale, and we discovered that I had ordered two bundles etc, and that each bundle was 10 bare-root plants. We promptly strategically divided our lists so we didn't repeat species, and bought bundles of a bunch of other stuff too.

 But then we have the best problem ever: so many plants that need to get in the ground! And it's a beautiful weekend! So for the rest of Saturday we worked in H's tiny back yard, where we moved around clumps of rosemary and oregano to make room for various exciting berries. She also gave me two of her rose bushes, since she's really short of space and I'm not so much, and when I got home I plopped those into the front garden bed beside the driveway, which has had a big blank spot in it ever since the old heating oil tank came out of its underground lair.

Sunday it was my turn.

buy less, make more

2015 got off to a bit of a rocky start for me -- I got food poisoning on the night of the 2nd. I'd never had the full-blown experience before, the fever and shakes and convulsive voiding of the whole GI tract by any available means. Now that I have, I think once was enough. I was mostly wiped out for the rest of the weekend and only started eating actual meals again on Monday. Food is still making me kind of nauseous most of the time, as my colonies of carefully selected internal symbiotes struggle to recover from the purge. I have been carefully applying small doses of kombucha and live-culture yogurt to encourage them. I miss my symbiotes. :(

This weekend, though! This weekend I'm going to sit down for real and make a plan for the garden. I think the rule is that I have to make a basic list before I open a catalog, so that I'm then shopping only for varieties instead of completely impulse buying. There are just too many beautiful things from Baker Creek otherwise.

Also this weekend, or later this month, making a plan for the front yard: the street-facing 1/3 or so of the yard is on a slope, which makes mowing it absolutely awful, so it's first on my list for replanting. I recently made a commitment to actively study and practice Druidry, and as part of that commitment I took a few vows to do things this year that would lessen my impact on the earth and improve the health of my environment. One of them was to rework that area from lawn (which supports very little wildlife) into a stand of native shrubs and wildflowers (which will support birds, bees, squirrels, butterflies, all the tiny unappreciated fauna that live in and around fertile soil....). I'm looking forward to the transformation so much. Even the part where it's going to take a lot of digging and grubbing in the dirt and digging some more.

Also also, I wanted to mention my one resolution for this year: buy less, make more. More and more, I find that consuming passively doesn't give me much pleasure, whereas the time and effort involved in making things to meet my own needs are immensely satisfying. Learn, make, thrive: the good life.

not the lawn you're looking for

You get a tremendous amount of spam in your physical mailbox as a new homeowner. Among the predatory attempts to get involved in my mortgage payments and the "no really this is economical" brochures from companies that want to sell me oil for the furnace I'm replacing, the one that has bemused me most was one from a lawn service company, which might be the most impressive piece of scare fluff I've seen outside of Faux News.

Your lawn isn't the only thing growing right now, it warns on the outside. (I should hope not, given the amount I've spent this year in both money and time to establish new species.) Inside the envelope, the contents get more explicit, but only slightly: Weeds are a serious threat to your lawn right now. That's in bold and set off like a headline, so obviously it's important. Right? The text beneath talks about weeds "such as dandelions" doing their best to "stake a claim" on my yard, and exhorting me to "fight back." It doesn't go into details about what the dandelions will do with their seized territory, but presumably it's something nefarious. Maybe they're in league with the terrorists.

But fear not! With the help of this noble-spirited lawn company and their Science, my lawn can be saved! And it'll only cost $29.95 for the lawn's "first application." No details on the application, either, but if it has an essay question I have doubts about my lawn's ability to get accepted.

In case I haven't been swayed yet, the flyer attempts peer pressure. Over 30 of your neighbors already have [our product]. What are you waiting for? Apart from the fact that if 30 of my neighbors jumped off a bridge that would not, in fact, be a good reason for me to jump.... Either these guys are very creative in their definition of "neighbor" or their SCIENCE isn't as effective at promoting monoculture as they insist it is: all the yards I can see from my own are playing host to The Fluff-Seeded Menace right now. Good gods, the whole street is in league with the forces of evil!

I think of the company every time I hack up another square foot of grass to make room for herbs or berries or something. Not only am I failing to properly secure my borders against the evils of WEEDS, I'm sabotaging the grass itself. Suddenly I'm not just planting things that I want to grow, I'm attacking the very foundation of Proper Lawns, vandalizing the great symbol of homeownership. Nothing like a little illicit activity to get the blood pumping and the energy up!

So thanks, lawn guys. You've added a lot to my yard-tending experience, without any applications at all.