Country chores

With excellent assistance from the Better Half  [BH], the mums are now planted along the north side of the  drive. Some time in the  next few days, I’ll wander off and see if I can find a couple of aster plants.

asters, still on the “To Do” list

Photo by J. Harrington

Once the mums were in the  ground, the BH watered them and I proceeded, on my own, to pick up the trash along our stretch of country road, much of the litter had blown out the top hatch of one or more of the solid waste collection trucks that service the township. After that, I burned the latest batch of broken, dead branches brought down by recent storms. In that process, the sand burs and grasses previously mowed from along the road were consumed by fire (in the fire pit).

Tidying the place up has been aided and abetted by members of the local deer herd, one or more of whom have been consuming  the bur oak acorns that were dropping onto the drive. This morning we caught a glimpse of one of the guilty parties, or an accomplice, in the field behind the house. Life around here would be vastly improved if whitetail deer added poison ivy to their favorite foods list.

All in all, I’ve reached a point where my middle-class upbringing, focused as it was on neat and orderly, is slowly yielding to a countrified emphasis on ecological function. Instead of cleaning all the oak leaf and pine needle mix before planting  the mums, I left the mix there as mulch. There’s plenty of other places around the property I can gather leaves to feed brown material into the compost.

That’s it for now. Although not technically a chore, I baked another loaf of artisan sourdough bread this morning. For the first time ever, I think, the Better Half told me a loaf of my bread needed more salt. I’m going to go taste it for myself now. We’ll be back tomorrow, dog willing and the river don’t rise too much.

Mowing

By Robert Wrigley

Sleepy and suburban at dusk,

I learn again the yard’s

geometry, edging around the garden

and the weedy knots of flowers, circling

trees and shrubs, giving

a wide berth to the berry patch,

heavy and sprawled out of its bounds.

Shoving such a machine

around a fairway of dandelions,

it is easy to feel absurd.

The average lawn, left alone

one hundred years, could become

a hardwood forest. An admirable project.

Still I carry on, following week on week

the same mowing pattern, cutting edges,

almost sprinting the last narrow swaths.

And tonight, as I mow over

the bushels of fallen peaches,

sending pits soaring over the neighbors’ fences,

seems hardly any different.

But on one crooked march I walk

across the thin hidden hole

to a yellowjacket hive. The blade pulls

them up from their deep sweet chamber

just as my bare legs go by.

A bee lands heavily,

all blunder and revenge, and the sting

is a quick embrace and release,

like the dared kid’s run and touch

of a blind man. I’m blind now

with the shock and pain of it,

howling in a sprint toward the house,

the mower flopped on its side, wild blade loose

in the darkening air.

                                 Later,

the motor sputtered quiet, starved by tilt,

I’m back in the twilight,

a half-dozen stings packed in wet tobacco,

carrying a can of gasoline, a five-foot torch.

The destruction is easy: shove can

slow to entranceway lip, pull

back and light torch, use torch

to tip can. One low whump and it’s over.

A few flaming drones flutter out and fall.

Stragglers, late returners, cruise

wide circles around the ruins.

In the cool September night they fly

or die. In the morning I finish my chores.

All the way to winter the blackened hole

remains. On Christmas Eve a light

late snow covers it and all

the lawn’s other imperfections: crabgrass

hummocks, high maple roots,

the mushroom-laden fairy ring that defies

obliteration and appears every spring

more visible than ever. Standing

in the window, the scent

of pine powerful around me,

the snap of wood undoing itself in the stove,

I wonder at this thin and cold

camouflage, falling,

gradually falling over what has gone

and grown before. And I hear

that other rattle and report, that engine

driven by another fire. I think of a gold

that is sweet and unguent, a gold

that is a blaze of years behind me.

I hear wind in its regular passes

blowing across the roof,

feel in my legs a minute and icy tingling,

as though I have stood too long

in one place or made again another wrong step,

as though the present itself

were a kind of memory, coiled, waiting,

dying to be seen from tomorrow.

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