Friday, July 24, 2015

A Long Silence

Few words. Few words here, at least. A loathing to turn on the computer. Hours spent out under the sky, with no roof. Time spent poking around the garden. (Tomatoes are coming on, and I can barely keep up with the beans.) Nothing too precious in my private landscape, only intense observation of what is, what is here, now. Perhaps what others might call an untidyness, but my current attitude to those Those Who Cluck is: I don't give a fuck. Honestly.

Cynicism aside (and I battle against it mightily), I enjoy a lifelong love affair with the mechanisms of nature. And in the city, nature is what happens when one doesn't obsessively tidy up. I mean, it's not entirely obvious that there's any nature at work here. A short length of unsplit firewood aka piece of dead tree might look, to some, as a laziness, a why-didn't-she-put-that-out-for-yardwaste-pickup scenario. Two short lengths of unsplit firewood might look like someone dropped something and didn't bother to pick up after herself. To me, these decaying hunks of tree are mini-ecosystems, hosts to beneficial fungi and insects, adding nutrients (organic!) to the soil as they slowly assimilate themselves back into the earth.

And realizing, after rereading the above paragraph, that I actually do give a fuck.

2 comments:

  1. Over eager tidiness is anti-nature. I've noticed that, back in the UK, the owners of big ancestral estates are leaving dead trees where they fall; for the same reason as you. Previously they would have been sawn-up, taken away, and used as firewood.

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  2. I have wood from the cherry tree we cut down last year. I've placed the lengths of it (about 2 ft. per) all around the yard to create rough borders. I like a more wild ecosystem, too. No type A gardening for moi. I am apparently in good company.

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