Two quotes

Two patches of former lawn. Now the back is jungle and the front is pretty bare, but I'm happily working toward that happy medium. Plus, I have artichokes, chard, blueberries, and more, along with the flowers.

Here are two quotes I've run across recently:

"Life is animated water."

Wendy Johnson, Gardening at the Dragon's Gate

"Lawns are nature purged of sex and death. No wonder Americans like them so much."

Michael Pollan, "Why Mow"

The first one reminds me of one of my favorites lines from a favorite obscure book, The Family Cow, by Dirk Van Loon. If you ever find yourself with a personal milk cow, this is the book you want. In the meantime, this wisdom, possibly slightly misquoted from memory: "A cow is nature's way of moving water from one place to another." Anyone who has hauled water for cows, or mucked out a barn, knows whereof he speaks.

The second was quoted in a New Yorker (July 21, 08) review of books on the history and culture of suburban lawns. (This is also the issue with the notorious Barack and Michelle Obama cover illustration.) Reading through the article, I came to think that Pollan's quote is actually less true than it should be. Pollan was referring to the fact that mowing keeps lawn grass in a perpetual state of immaturity. It is never allowed to flower, set seed, and die. What dies instead, all too often, is the other life in and around the grass. Herbicides, pesticides, over-fertilization, and the massive quantities of water diverted from more essential uses to keep lawns green--all these add up to death, if not sex, on a massive scale.

Even more than the environmental checklist, however, I was struck by the cultural assumptions that have built up around lawns. A couple more quotes give the flavor: "A fine carpet of green grass stamps the inhabitants as good neighbors, as desirable citizens," wrote the founder of Levittown, one of the first suburban developments.

"The appearance of a lawn bespeaks the personal values of the resident. Some feel that a person who keeps the lawn perfectly clipped is a person who can be trusted."

The Lawn Institute

So what does my lawn say about my personal values?

Since my front yard and side yards are too bumpy with tree roots for an attractive lawn anyway, the decision to dig them up was easy, and my neighborhood--unlike many--is more than tolerant about that kind of thing. If neighbors think my blueberry bushes, peach tree, artemisia, euphorbias, lavender, creeping thyme, and pots of chard are signs of my untrustworthy nature, they haven't said so. Although antilawn enthusiasts often gloss over this aspect, it is way more work than grass would be. Perhaps that will change when it is better established--this is only the second year for most of it, and I am still rehabbing the soil as well as finding cheap plants--but I have my doubts.

In the back I still have a patch of lawn. It gets watered when my grandbaby is there playing with the hose. It gets mowed with a non-power mower every week or two. It is big enough for a table and chairs, plus room to lie on the grass and read, or watch bugs navigate their own version of the urban jungle. I like it and I wouldn't want to give it up.

Watering the Roots

My front garden spent years as the otherwise unloved playground for a giant Norway maple's giant root system. Any soil I could get at by chopping through the tangle was as fluffy and incoherent as dust. Water rolled right down the slope to the sidewalk, leaving the ground as parched as before. 

This is my third summer here, and the view from the front is better, but watering is still a challenge. The maple is a glorious but greedy neighbor when it comes to other plants. I've mulched and mulched, and brought in topsoil, but the new blueberries, peach tree, vines and flowers are still outmaneuvered in the quest for moisture and nutrients. 

That may be why I responded so strongly to this passage from the aforementioned Gardening at the Dragon's Gate, by Wendy Johnson. She tells of going out to her father-in-law's garden shortly after his death, to water his plants and his memory.

"The soil was compacted dust, as if forty circus elephants had been tethered to that very spot for decades. I chipped away at the dry flanks of this abandoned garden and remembered Charlie years ago watering his riot of 'State Fair' zinnias and prize Jersey tomatoes in this very same spot.

"It took me two solid days just to loosen the soil in his garden, going a few inches down at a time, coaxing the ground to accept small tentative sips of water. Even though it is best not to cultivate soil when it is too dry or too wet, I had only this time and this ground, so I pried open a shallow seam in the dirt and watched the water trickle into the dry earth. An hour or so later, when the soil was softer and more receptive, I pried deeper with fork and hose.

"...Little by little the soil began to swell with new life, humming a slow, fat summer song."

My own dry ground ritual starts when I plant anything perennial in the front, especially on the slope. I dig out a hole behind the new plant and fill it most of the way with topsoil and compost.

I leave it a little concave. When I water, that's where it goes. The water sinks into the fertile pocket instead of rolling across the top of the ground, and the little bush gets a special delivery of moisture and food. Fanatical composter though I am, I never have enough of it to mulch everything, so this system allows me to, as Ken Kesey used to say, "put your good where it will do the most."