Rakes ! You don't realize you lived through the good old days of yard work, Monica. Now it's all 2 cycle leaf blowers that operate at some ungodly decibel level, usually around when you're getting home from work, ready to relax with some peace and quiet. Fortunately, living on a boat, I dodge most of the suburban yard syndrome. It's so bad that some towns, like Seattle, have started banning the infernal machines. America is a noisy place, and it's harder and harder to get away from it. Of course, here, most people are oblivious, or in some twisted way, like it.
I've never had a leaf blower but, at different times in my life, have used an impressive collection of manual rakes. Perhaps I am more antebellum (in this one sense) than I previously recognized.
My time in Seattle city (2000-2004) must have been pre-leaf blower times. Oh how I miss that hobbit yard in Wallingford with its deck, the waving, leggy Icelandic poppies, Adirondack chairs and charcoal grill, and the whispering of my electric mower, tethered to an external all-weather outlet by its tangerine umbilical.
One reason I left Maine was I saw yardwork to the end of my days on a 40 acre farm. Not that it wasn't good and satisfying work. Who can resist a bamboo rake in October, but it would have precluded writing the way I wanted to.
I like working in the yard. My fingernails are dirty from weeding today, and I very much enjoy having gathered enough rocks to surround my place with stone walls. Good fences make good neighbors, and I was tired of dog owners using my yard as a canine toilet.
I see the city council in Livorno now makes dog owners not only pick up the poop, but carry water to rinse away the pee. Bravo!
I used to watch big leashed dogs crashing through my flower beds and whizzing all over the shady grass. Now, I enjoy my battery-powered mower, which is mercifully quiet, minimally vibratory, and free of noxious fumes.
Watering the flowers is fun, too, and virtually requires a chilled Vermentino.
I am definitely inviting you to my next garden party, Vermentino on ice.
I am all in on regular gardening in pots, containers and beds. What I'm never going back to is free family labor for a city-sized park to accomodate a single family. Although, and again, I loved that pool, surrounded by elephant ears, lantanna, hanging vines and one huge apple tree to the north.
In Seattle I had a tiny garden, a micro lawn, a plug-in mower with a 50-foot cord, an apple tree, chives, and a recurring bed of Icelandic poppies. Of course in Seattle's rich volcanic soil you'd be a fool to fail abjectly as a gardener. I love to grow and nurture plants (and pets and kids and husband and self and community at large - thanks Virgo moon).
Your commentary in doggerel never fails to charm. So glad to have found my preferred internet ad hoc poet. xxx
I think it’s been 5 years since I became a house and yard owner, wow, good grief, and OMG!
The house and cabin have taken 100’s of hours to fix rotten decks, replace a roof, replace carpet with real floor, upgrade the lighting, build a practical staircase and kitchen, remodel the entry way and shop, the entry is a work in progress. The yard however is largely taking care of itself. The former owners were “chemical” people according to my neighbor, the lack of any “weeds” in the lawn or driveway bears this out. Now I have a healthy crop of dandelions, tiny daisies, and many other interesting plants and flowers. I planted as many fruit trees as seems reasonable in the lawn, the soil was hard and seemed sterile, I’ve read that dandelions help with that and I have noticed some mole activity in one area. I do mow the little lawn there is until it turns brown and again in the fall a couple of times. The bane of my yard life are the deer who rip branches off the trees and have pretty much destroyed my raspberries. A fence is coming.
So there you have the odyssey of my property ownership in brief.
Now that is some honest labor, Eric. Rooten decks, roofs and floors, woof.
Chemical lawns gross me out, they always have and always will, they were such a thing in Oklahoma (rolled lawn a poor substitute for honest prairie biomass). Happy to hear you're letting the lawn rewild...
and the deer, the deer. Those deer. My parents are also always on about the deer. I hate to be a faunacentric activist, but the deer were there first. I say let the trees and raspberries go. The deer never seemed to eat rhododendrons or salmonberries. Plant what they won't eat.
Looking forward to seeing your place this summer. <3
I've taken up rescuing peperomias and calatheas for indoors from local grocery store displays and planting petunia boxes every so often (so easy in Chicago! They don't cook during the day!) but never again will I have a huge yard like what I grew up with. We had TWO acres of prairie, most of which just remained native grass, and we mowed and mowed, all summer. Most weekends were used on yardwork, not trips to Turner Falls or the zoo or the water park. My mom had flowerbeds and a veggie garden she enjoyed, but the rest of it was getting in the way of life more than it was enhancing it. It was like a little homestead claim where my dad could commune with his ancestors, I guess.
I spent many happy days in Seattle in the employ of different little pharma companies and I always envied the terroir and benign climate with its long growing season. I manage to coax some pretty blossoms here in Maine, but I confess that Churchill’s dictum, “War is the natural occupation of man. War, and gardening” rings true.
So much American suburban gardening, to your point, is driven by invidious bourgeois motives (see: Fussell) devoid of any satisfaction but the dubious one of having met the standards of other middle-class toilers in the yard; upper middles hire out the work.
The peonies got a jump on me,
A growth spurt I did not foresee. They’ll soon lie down, of their own weight,
Beside the lichened fieldstone gate.
Last year, I made the same mistake; grown tall and heavy,
Rakes ! You don't realize you lived through the good old days of yard work, Monica. Now it's all 2 cycle leaf blowers that operate at some ungodly decibel level, usually around when you're getting home from work, ready to relax with some peace and quiet. Fortunately, living on a boat, I dodge most of the suburban yard syndrome. It's so bad that some towns, like Seattle, have started banning the infernal machines. America is a noisy place, and it's harder and harder to get away from it. Of course, here, most people are oblivious, or in some twisted way, like it.
I've never had a leaf blower but, at different times in my life, have used an impressive collection of manual rakes. Perhaps I am more antebellum (in this one sense) than I previously recognized.
My time in Seattle city (2000-2004) must have been pre-leaf blower times. Oh how I miss that hobbit yard in Wallingford with its deck, the waving, leggy Icelandic poppies, Adirondack chairs and charcoal grill, and the whispering of my electric mower, tethered to an external all-weather outlet by its tangerine umbilical.
Truly a romantic yard. I get it.
One reason I left Maine was I saw yardwork to the end of my days on a 40 acre farm. Not that it wasn't good and satisfying work. Who can resist a bamboo rake in October, but it would have precluded writing the way I wanted to.
I like working in the yard. My fingernails are dirty from weeding today, and I very much enjoy having gathered enough rocks to surround my place with stone walls. Good fences make good neighbors, and I was tired of dog owners using my yard as a canine toilet.
I see the city council in Livorno now makes dog owners not only pick up the poop, but carry water to rinse away the pee. Bravo!
I used to watch big leashed dogs crashing through my flower beds and whizzing all over the shady grass. Now, I enjoy my battery-powered mower, which is mercifully quiet, minimally vibratory, and free of noxious fumes.
Watering the flowers is fun, too, and virtually requires a chilled Vermentino.
—————-
I’m fair-skinned, but I love the sun,
Despite what every doctor said.
So now I sport a broad-brimmed hat,
To shield the cancers on my head.
Thus kitted out, I weed primroses
Ignore that crop of keratoses. ,
Then as the sun begins to set
I get the flowers nice and wet.
Some fertilizer for the hosta,
A pink wine from the Valle d’Aosta.
I sink into my favorite chaise;
That’s home-grown basil in my Caprese.
A bowl of pasta with Romesco
Completes my garden snack al fresco.
I banish thoughts of loss and death,
Except my deadly garlic breath.
I’m too relaxed to sweat caesura
Expressing a gardener’s sprezzatura.
I am definitely inviting you to my next garden party, Vermentino on ice.
I am all in on regular gardening in pots, containers and beds. What I'm never going back to is free family labor for a city-sized park to accomodate a single family. Although, and again, I loved that pool, surrounded by elephant ears, lantanna, hanging vines and one huge apple tree to the north.
In Seattle I had a tiny garden, a micro lawn, a plug-in mower with a 50-foot cord, an apple tree, chives, and a recurring bed of Icelandic poppies. Of course in Seattle's rich volcanic soil you'd be a fool to fail abjectly as a gardener. I love to grow and nurture plants (and pets and kids and husband and self and community at large - thanks Virgo moon).
Your commentary in doggerel never fails to charm. So glad to have found my preferred internet ad hoc poet. xxx
I think it’s been 5 years since I became a house and yard owner, wow, good grief, and OMG!
The house and cabin have taken 100’s of hours to fix rotten decks, replace a roof, replace carpet with real floor, upgrade the lighting, build a practical staircase and kitchen, remodel the entry way and shop, the entry is a work in progress. The yard however is largely taking care of itself. The former owners were “chemical” people according to my neighbor, the lack of any “weeds” in the lawn or driveway bears this out. Now I have a healthy crop of dandelions, tiny daisies, and many other interesting plants and flowers. I planted as many fruit trees as seems reasonable in the lawn, the soil was hard and seemed sterile, I’ve read that dandelions help with that and I have noticed some mole activity in one area. I do mow the little lawn there is until it turns brown and again in the fall a couple of times. The bane of my yard life are the deer who rip branches off the trees and have pretty much destroyed my raspberries. A fence is coming.
So there you have the odyssey of my property ownership in brief.
Now that is some honest labor, Eric. Rooten decks, roofs and floors, woof.
Chemical lawns gross me out, they always have and always will, they were such a thing in Oklahoma (rolled lawn a poor substitute for honest prairie biomass). Happy to hear you're letting the lawn rewild...
and the deer, the deer. Those deer. My parents are also always on about the deer. I hate to be a faunacentric activist, but the deer were there first. I say let the trees and raspberries go. The deer never seemed to eat rhododendrons or salmonberries. Plant what they won't eat.
Looking forward to seeing your place this summer. <3
Oh the yard! Never again!
I've taken up rescuing peperomias and calatheas for indoors from local grocery store displays and planting petunia boxes every so often (so easy in Chicago! They don't cook during the day!) but never again will I have a huge yard like what I grew up with. We had TWO acres of prairie, most of which just remained native grass, and we mowed and mowed, all summer. Most weekends were used on yardwork, not trips to Turner Falls or the zoo or the water park. My mom had flowerbeds and a veggie garden she enjoyed, but the rest of it was getting in the way of life more than it was enhancing it. It was like a little homestead claim where my dad could commune with his ancestors, I guess.
Two acres of summer mowing in Oklahoma is insane. No wonder you found home inside the Chicago Loop.
Forfeiting summer water fun for sweaty buggy mowing as a kid, aggh! Gross injustice.
I spent many happy days in Seattle in the employ of different little pharma companies and I always envied the terroir and benign climate with its long growing season. I manage to coax some pretty blossoms here in Maine, but I confess that Churchill’s dictum, “War is the natural occupation of man. War, and gardening” rings true.
So much American suburban gardening, to your point, is driven by invidious bourgeois motives (see: Fussell) devoid of any satisfaction but the dubious one of having met the standards of other middle-class toilers in the yard; upper middles hire out the work.
The peonies got a jump on me,
A growth spurt I did not foresee. They’ll soon lie down, of their own weight,
Beside the lichened fieldstone gate.
Last year, I made the same mistake; grown tall and heavy,
They would break.
I made a bouquet for my wife,
The blossoms teemed with insect life!
Madame treats many things with shrugs,
But not a bouquet full of bugs.
Ah yes ! Yet another reason to invoke Fussell's sage insights into American class: its functions and evidence.
A picky lass may prescribe bouquets,
A demanding lass requests one.
I here confess on a summer's day
I'll gladly accept one with bugs on.
A mantis tucked in thorny leaves;
two ladybugs canoodling -
transparent spiders spinning threads,
or baby doodlebugs doodling.
Be these not Nature's adornments?
Are they not living jewels?
Twine my blooms with bits of string;
bouquets without bugs are for fools.
I’ve often felt it time well spent
In making nosegays for their scent.
For greasy Joan who keels the pot,
A fragrant lass is what she’s not,
I do not seek romantic clenches
With ripe, malodorous serving wenches.
For ‘though their hearts be e’er so pure.
I’ve often felt it time well spent
In making nosegays for their scent.
For greasy Joan who keels the pot,
A fragrant lass is what she’s not,
I do not seek romantic clenches
With ripe, malodorous serving wenches.
For ‘though their hearts be e’er so pure…
Their pong I simply can’t endure.
When as in silks my lady goes,
She must recall that silken clothes
Are spun, in no uncertain terms,
By small, unappetizing worms.
Fine silks that cross the Hindu Kush
First all go ‘round the mulb’ry bush.
‘Though bugs catch in milady’s craw.
They also make her peau de soie.
A wedding in a silken gown,
Or itchy wool in boring brown?
There’s no real choice, it’s clear to me,
That brave vibration each way free
Depends on silk’s fluidity.