Grass And Hair

I often have fantasies of a peaceful life spent doing some simple, repetitive task--darning socks, say, or making baskets, or saying rosaries for the souls in Purgatory.  I don't know what prompts these dreams, because in reality I have less tolerance for repetition than just about anybody.

Take this morning, part of which I spent weeding the cracks between the stones of our patio, pulling up plants who think there is no better place in the whole green earth to call home than the gap between two pieces of slate.  These gaps are so narrow that I can't get my weeding tool into them, and am reduced to yanking out the weeds with my fingernails.  This works o.k. with things like clover and mint, which are easy to uproot after a rain, when the ground is wet and soft.  But dandelions and crabgrass happily surrender their leaves, secure in the knowledge that this will strengthen their root systems and allow them to put out even more luxuriant growth.

Time and time again, between June and September, I weed the patio.  And time and time again I rue the day when I decided to build a patio outside the back door, instead of a deck.  I went with the patio option because around these parts slate practically grows on trees, and it would have been a crime against nature to use any other material.  Yet every time I weed I think how a deck would have saved me this endless, boring, finger-hurting task. 

And then I wonder why I cannot simply accept this weeding, be one with the crabgrass and the dandelions, and give thanks that I can still squat for hours.  And I do, for a minute or two, but before I know it, I'm deep in technicolor fantasies about a deck.

Spent the rest of the morning brushing dogs--mostly Wolfie. If you have never brushed a German Shepherd, you have no idea what I'm talking about.  Among their many distinctions, Shepherds are the all-breed champion growers and shedders of hair.  They have top coats and under coats, long hairs and short hairs, stiff hairs and soft-as-dandelion-fluff-stick-to-your-lips hairs.  They are generous with their hair, letting you have it by the pound--on your rugs, your clothes, your air--because there's always more where it came from, in all seasons. 

Again, I ask myself, why can't I just be present with the brush, and the dog panting in my face, and the sun beating down on us all?  Why can't I be grateful, etc. etc.?  And why, why, having over the years brushed several cubic tons of hair off Lexi did I have to go and get another Shepherd?

I lucked out with Bisou, though.  Her coat is long and fine, and knots just slide off.  It doesn't take long to get her looking like a Breck Shampoo Girl, and at the end of the session all I have to show for it is barely a handful of red and gold strands. 

So now the dogs are brushed and the patio's weeded.  But even as I reward myself by writing here, I can hear the faint sounds of weeds and hair pushing up through earth and skin.

The End Of Thyme

I just came in from spending three hours weeding the front walk. This is a stone walk that goes from the driveway to the front door but which, because of the peculiar design of the house, nobody ever uses. However, because someone some day might cast his or her eye in that direction, the stone walk has to look decent.

A couple of years ago I planted creeping thyme in the interstices between the stones. The thyme would form dense mats, I was told, that would keep the weeds at bay. Plus, it would look adorable.

And it does. For a couple of weeks in May and sporadically throughout the summer the thyme bursts into tiny pink, white, and blue blooms. As promised, it has formed thick mats that in places threaten to cover the stones entirely.

However, the mats of thyme do not keep the weeds at bay. On the contrary, they form a protected environment for seedlings to prosper and propagate. And because the weed roots are tightly interwoven with the thyme roots, it is impossible to pull one out without destroying the other.

Creeping thyme has fragile, wee roots, stems and leaves, and for the last two summers I have spent hours squatting over it, tweezers in hand, trying to pull out weeds without disturbing it. (I didn't actually use tweezers, but I wanted to.) In the last rainy month, however, things got away from me. When I looked out this morning I saw that those supposedly invincible thyme mats were covered in crabgrass and ground ivy.

Both weeds are, each in its distinctive way, ineradicable. The ground ivy roots and stems break at the merest pull, and each piece left in the ground lives to creep again. The crabgrass roots itself so deeply in the thyme that it's impossible to pull it out without pulling out great wads of thyme at the same time.

And that is what I did today. Instead of going at the job delicately as in the past, I dug furiously with my weeding tool and tugged and yanked and ended up discarding many square feet of creeping thyme along with the weeds. As a result, there are now numerous empty holes between the stones, the remaining thyme looks disheveled, and even as the sweat dries on my skin new little weeds are taking root.

One solution would be to mulch along both sides of the walk, thus establishing a barrier between the lawn (which is mostly weeds) and the thyme. This would involve laying down a thick layer of newspapers to kill the grass, and scattering many bags of mulch on top of that. It goes without saying that by next summer I would have to weed the mulch as well.

Or I could simply turn my head away from the problematic stone walk for a season or two. By the time I look again the stones and the thyme will have disappeared under a blanket of crab grass, ground ivy and bishop's weed. And the walk that nobody ever used will slip quietly into oblivion.

A Good Day To Be Outside

It's miraculous weather here at the moment—blue skies, cool breezes, no bugs. Well, almost--I just got my first black-fly bite of the season. It made a big lump behind my ear, and blood trickled down my neck. I think it's a badge of honor, a sign that I'm a real Vermonter.

This is the kind of weather that makes even weeding enjoyable. The ground is moist and loose, the weeds young and naïve. They give way easily and I dump them into a big tub and carry them to the goats and chickens, who enjoy picking through them like customers at a yard sale.

Later in the year, sweat runs into my eyes and stings me as I weed. But now, barely breaking a sweat, I congratulate myself on getting a headstart on the weeds. Pretty soon the “good” plants will form a canopy over the ground and smother the weeds in their cradles.

Everything smells so good. Here is what I smelled this morning: lilacs of a certain age (I dislike the scent of immature lilac), lemon balm, orange mint, lavender, ornamental sage (strong stuff), some unidentified mint, chamomile, apple mint, rose/lemon geraniums, and drying hay.

After weeding, I started moving stuff around: some thyme into the bare spot next to the back steps, some sunflower volunteers from the vegetable garden to the area under the bird feeder, and the mystery seedlings to a bed I made for them in a sunny spot (I'm sure they're the descendants of Halloween pumpkins we chopped up for the chickens last fall).

I filled the watering can in the tub garden and watered the new plantings. Then I refilled the tub garden with the hose. Why not water directly from the hose, you ask? First, because plants hate cold showers, and the water from the tub is not icy like the water from the hose, which comes straight from the well. Second, because this allows me to renew the water in the tub, which will help to keep my two precious Shubunkin, Alpha and Omega, alive.

Since I got the two fish a week ago, I've barely caught a glimpse of them. I read that you should provide fish with a good hiding spot, and I did such a good job of that that nobody would guess there are guests in the tub. I'm hoping that with time they will get over their shyness.

After the gardening I realized that this was the day to wave the buck rag.

Here's some more goat ob/gyn: goats come into heat every 18 to 21 days. The signs of heat are tail wagging, restlessness, bleating, and secretions from the appropriate places. Usually a goat will show all these even if there isn't a buck for miles around. But some goats have “silent” heats, and that's when you have recourse to the buck rag. This is a piece of cloth that has been rubbed on a buck's scent glands (on the top of his head) and carefully stored in a glass jar.

With the wood thrush as background music, I opened the jar and waved the cloth in front of Blossom and Alsiki. They were certainly interested. They sniffed and sniffed and tried to nibble it. (The buck rag, by the way, smelled like very old goat cheese, the kind I can't stand.) Then they tried to nibble my shirt.

They did not, however, wag their tails, become restless, bleat, or anything else. Perhaps they were just happy to smell their old friend, the buck Challenger, whom they had visited recently. Perhaps they are repressed, and believe in keeping their feelings to themselves. Or perhaps, may it please the goddesses, perhaps they're pregnant.

This evening, as my husband mowed the lawn, I found a freaked-out toad trying to escape the mower. I picked it up--it lay cool and still in my hand--and carried it to a hiding place near the vegetable garden.

Vegetable Morals

As you know if you've been reading along, last fall I attempted to soften the severe Yankee looks of our house by making a flower bed.

Our front porch rises about 2 ½ feet above the ground. Right where the foundation meets the dirt there was a scraggly old row of tiger lilies that had been invaded by Bishop's Weed. The orange blooms didn't look very good against the barn red of the siding, and I knew I didn't stand a chance of getting rid of the Bishop's Weed as long as it could grow into and around the lilies, so I decided to euthanize the lot.

In November, I razed the lilies to the ground, covered them in black plastic, and threw some mulch on top. By March, I felt pretty certain that the snow and ice and lack of light had done their deadly task. Just to make sure, however, I bought a truckload of “mulch hay,” the stuff that farmers sell cheaply because it is too old or moldy to feed to animals.

When you cut the strings that hold a hay bale together, it comes apart in neat accordion-like flakes, each about three inches thick. I covered the area where the tiger lilies and Bishop's Weed had last been seen with a three-flake layer of hay that reached a third of the way to the floor of the porch. Then I stomped everything down to make a deadly thick barrier against light and air.

A few days later, I was checking the hydrangeas for signs that they had survived the winter when I noticed something funny. The mulch I had put over the tiger lilies had risen like a loaf of bread, and was now even with the floor of the porch.

I went to investigate, and heard a crunching sound as I walked on top of the hay. I parted a couple of flakes and saw that the yeast that had caused the rise was none other than the tiger lilies which, undeterred by plastic, mulch, and hay, had heard the call of spring and were doing their best to reach the sun.

The leaves that were pushing their way under the hay were pale but turgid. I attempted to pull them up but the best I could do was twist and mangle them and break off the tops. My hands were wet with sap, and as I dug around under the hay I found the inevitable Bishop's Weed, waiting for the merest drop of sunshine to rise up and take over the flower bed, if not the world.

I must say I feel abashed by such drive, such joie de vivre among these ordinary plants. Shouldn't this kind of optimism and self confidence be rewarded somehow?

It should, but in me, not in weeds. I will continue to pull up every shoot of tiger lily and Bishop's Weed I find, while reminding myself to emulate the moral qualities of my vegetable enemies.