!Little meadow
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agk's diary
20 June 2023 @ 01:44 UTC
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written on GPD Win 1
in bed after a day of being a mediocre nurse
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When I moved in there was grass behind the house,
a little, inhospitible backyard past the sandpapery
square of concrete patio. Looking out the back door
there's the sun-blasted patio, some grass, swamp
edge, wooded hill up to the cemetary scrubby with
thicket, young maple, sourwood.
I dug a bed for mint along the house's back wall up
to the patio, another bed out from it that supports
a healthy horseradish where Evy grew gourds. Other
plants didn't do well there til this year when I
planted onions. Evy's parents brought their old
painted iron yard table and chairs.
We rent. Last year our landlord's yard guys quit
mowing the backyard. Maybe they didn't like ducking
under our clothesline, garden-bed proliferation,
or hidden plastic baby toys. We grew tomatoes in
a bed by the fence between our neighbors' side of
the duplex & the cemetary. Neighbors grew peppers.
This year over there I dug 3 more beds, sheet-
mulched them with courrigated cardboard topped with
shredded paper, torn paperboard egg cartons & saw-
dust. We put in tomatoes, cucumber. First daughter
sowed bush beans. After rain suddenly the grass in
the rest of the yard bolted and went to seed.
There were good things under the grass: clover,
broad & narrowleaf plantain, violets, dandelion,
smartweed, but the tall grass made it inhospitable
to us and birds who used to hunt worms there. I
whacked the tall grass down with a rake and compos-
ted it.
Wild lettuce and bull thistle became the new tall
plants, and fruiting canes of blackberry. I like
the little meadow. I want to dig up plants from
nearby meadows to introduce more species into it:
orange daylillies, purple milkweeds and vervain,
white queen anne's lace, blue chicory, feathery
yarrow, bushy elderflower.
One day soon I'll strap a shovel to the single-
speed cruiser "truck bike," throw a plastic 5-
gallon bucket in the milk crate ziptied to its back
rack, go poach some meadow.
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UPDATE 21 Jun @ 0202 UTC:
To fix the shovel to the bike frame I used a red
bandana & old green bungee cord. In the dark of a
moon 8% waxed from new I dug two daylilly plugs in
a field resplendent with hundreds.
One now has room to grow where I cut down the dying
hedge in front of the house. The other little stand
of daylillies towers in our meadow by the cemetary
fence.
