The Choices of an Approaching Spring
The garden and poultry catalogs have started to arrive, and we’re almost buried by them. But I don’t mind. It’s my favorite time of the year, second only to spring, when I actually get to start planting all those seeds that I’m going to buy, and skim through the cookbook shelves in the kitchen, looking for lost egg recipes. Right now the landscape is still nearly monochromatic with its tawny browns and dirty greens, dusted here and there with the white of last week’s snowfall, and I love the peacefulness of that look, truly. But as February moves to wrap up and we hurry it toward the door (has anyone ever wanted February to go on longer? I ask you…), my mind’s eye is awash with visions of the color riot coming our way. I also walk the land looking for the right fallen branch to herd chickens gently to the coop at all those July sunsets. Add “imagination” to the list of gifts these acres give without restraint.
Our home, the actual physical structure, does not present itself as a candidate for Country Living photo shoots, and I keep a few apologies in my pocket when new guests come to visit, though that’s not really necessary. The sheer expanse of land and birdsong that welcomes these folks is such a contrast to the concrete and horn-honking of their daily lives, they overlook the pile of unfinished project pieces on the front porch and the two dead blue spruce trees on the ridge that still need to come down, and drink in the unspoiled no-billboard-in-sight view of the meadow that beckons and stretches out at their boot-clad feet. We did have the house re-sided several years ago, in a charming buttercream color, and it looks sweet, so I don’t want to paint too “Green Acres” a picture in your mind, but if you spend more than an hour here, and look a bit more closely, the flaws we see as loveable become more distinct around the edges, and we’d understand completely if you had questions.
On my normal commute to and from the main office where I spend some of my daylight hours, I do a quick drive-by evaluation of houses and gardens that give me ideas, and sometimes envy. Most homes around here make good use of the space provided to them, and the requisite boxwood hedges are neatly trimmed and shaped. Add some red or yellow maples in the space between the stepping stones to the front door and the two-lane road, and now we’re talking country curb appeal. It’s on the branches of these trees that residents will hang the colored plastic Easter eggs, string two or three strands of blinking Christmas lights, and dangle a squirrel-proof bird feeder at just the right level to be visible from the front windows. We set the stage carefully for our natural entertainment out here, and make no apologies for its random look. Daffodils and tulips start out in neat rows on either side of the walkway up to the house, until those disgruntled squirrels apply their efforts in another direction, digging up and relocating bulbs while we sleep or knit in the living room. Then, come the first warm days of April and May, we scratch our heads a bit at the sight of a singular long-necked Apricot Parrot bloom, surrounded by a sea of fresh green spring grass, like an unintentional artistic tulip statement on the lawn. It’s minimalist and funny all at once.
A couple of neighbors good-naturedly cope with front yard flooding during the rainy seasons, creating temporary lakes that, if the water sits long enough, will sport a fringe of cattail sprouts and collect a flock of migrating Canada geese with a few mallards tossed in for diversity. When the gravel driveway is submerged, we wonder if we ought to float a skiff of provisions across to keep them going until the water recedes. So far, they’ve been ok, and wave from their SUV on their way to work. We look out for each other here, notice things and try to be noninvasively creative with our offers of help. Does that make sense? It’s not creepy, I promise.
One house, though, just seven minutes or so south of the main road, captures my attention every day in both directions on my commute. It’s a small white clapboard house with green shutters and a white barn out back. One tree stands about fifty yards from the front door, and that’s it for its botanical footprint. Not a bush or shrub, no raised garden beds out back, window boxes or half-cut wooden barrels with coral impatiens spilling out of them. Surrounding the foundation two feet out in every direction is pea gravel meticulously raked to pebbly perfection. No cement goose, naked or clothed, on the concrete slab front porch, and no shepherd hooks with feeders swaying in the breeze. The home’s face is clean and bright as it faces the west, and a peace settles deep within me as I drive by, slowing down to take it all in. I wonder how old the occupants are; such a simple presentation gives way to the plausible conclusion that the residents are past the hard yard work age, or at least have a doting grandchild willing to keep the place looking neat as a pin.
And now I’m torn, seed catalogue in my lap, with too many pages dog-eared in the herbs and perennials section. I know well enough the work it takes, planning and planting and tending to the offspring of my mid-February gardening ambitions. I’ve had my share of sawgrass blade cuts, stinging nettle rashes, and magnesium salt baths to coax my muscles through planting season. And I’ve left many a project unfinished, only to find it tangled up beneath a pelt of wild ivy and burdock. I make all sorts of solemn pledges to not let such a thing happen again, just please give me one more chance at a sensible spring gardening plan, please! But then those darn catalogues arrive in stacks and after I’ve shoveled off the front porch twice, I’m wrapped in an old quilt on the sofa, dreaming of basil and Aracaunas. Couldn’t I just be content with the wildflowers that have sprinkled and established themselves in the meadow and the field-turned-burgeoning forest and have done with it? The spring beauties with their delicate purple streaks, the tall mullein stalks sporting tiny yellow flowers, or the tightly-packed heads of white yarrow along the creek banks and the pungent scent of garlic chives crushed underfoot no matter how carefully I try to spare them my weight as I walk? I could get used to salads made of dandelion greens, creeping Charlie, red clover and sheep sorrel, I think. They’ve kindly done all this growing and blooming and reseeding and going seasonally dormant for years without my help at all.
We’ve tried all manner of floral décor on the outside of our dwelling, celebrating a couple of brilliantly-colorful seasons when Patrick worked as a driver for a local nursery. He’d bring home the discards of pink pansies and flame-red and orange cockscomb (a variety I've never tried from seed) by the flat, and I’d spend a happy Saturday afternoon tucking them into pinch pots and ceramic containers scored from the Goodwill, arranging them on top of old picnic table benches and wooden end tables on the porch, leaving some room for a wicker chair or two. It cheered us to walk across the remaining space on the front porch among the blooms, reaching out to run our fingers through the petals.
After all that, the simplicity of a more monastic-looking landscape does indeed have some appeal for us as we continue to accumulate our days on this gorgeous piece of paradise. I think I’d find it easier to rake a few feet of pea gravel back into place than inch my way around the house on my hands and knees, yanking out the purslane, pigweed and buckhorn plantain by the fistfuls. The gray and white of gravel could be pretty, couldn’t it, and I’d spare my lower back a bit? I could just buy eggs at the farmers market in May instead of raising mail-order chicks through the precarious awakening weeks of spring, changing out the newspaper bedding and refilling their waterers daily before showering for work, praying the raccoons don’t find a way into the pen after we’ve gone to bed?
But what sends our hearts soaring and lifts our spirits here or anywhere has often been the result of some significant effort on our part, and I respect that. For all the reasons I’ve written about in previous posts and more, I’ll offer up a few sore muscles in exchange for a dinner salad I bent over to pick after changing out of my work clothes on a Wednesday in June. I’ll happily scrub the potting soil stains from beneath my fingernails if I can look at the full pink and white head of a Peppermint hydrangea bobbing in the breeze in front of the living room windows, or touch the feathery leaves of a chocolate Cosmos on my way out the door for a Sunday morning walk at sunrise. And when Patrick is working late, the chickens and I have a grand time talking about what matters most, and I gently herd them back to their coop for the night, thanking them out loud for the pale sage green and brown speckled eggs they’ve given us for breakfasts that week.
As long as I can stand, and walk, and inch my way around these acres, I’ll do what I can to bring the color and the love. Whether minimalist or extravagant, to each her own peace, right?
