Category Archives: home

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Gone wild

There must have been a garden here long ago
No house but a chicken coop still stands
Three rhodys gone wild: lush and gorgeous show
Taller than I can reach overhead with hands
Scattered daffodils, the deer don’t like them much.
No tulips, the deer eat them down to the ground.
Petunia purple faces spread through brush.
The deer are shy not like the herds in town
Who teach the fawns to cross at crosswalks during day.
They don’t like rhodys either so the trio grows
Untrimmed, untrammeled, untamed, without a stay
I wonder if there’s envy from wild roses
Wild roses thorn each inch to hide in brush,
while the rhodys climb like trees, flowering lush.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: lush and for Cee’s Flower of the Day.

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The creeping wild

No mow May: here.

Home meadows are becoming more common, for pollinators. Unmown, with wildflowers. There is a movement for a no mow May, to help pollinators and insects survive. This will help the birds too, because insects are food.

I quit mowing half my lot in 2007, after checking with the neighbors. I had just finished a divorce and I was paying my ex and I did not have time to mow it, nor money, nor inclination. My lot is L shaped. The 1930s garage extends onto the second lot, which is perpendicular to the first lot and goes to the middle of the block. The plumbing goes there too.

The lot is a deer stop. The deer circle a route that is often the same from year to year. This lot is not very visible from the road because a huge rosa rugosa, well over my head, fronts on the street. The deer come in through the driveway. There are high fences around it now, but there are still two other exits. One at the other end, to another driveway, and one past the garage next door. I watch for fawns in the spring, the mothers will leave them there some days.

I have birds and nests and sometimes raccoons and squirrels. I have seen coyotes within a block. This year I have a pair of “swamp robins”, also known as varied thrush, at my bird feeder. That is a first. My present cats are allowed out on leash or in the cat cage, so I have lots more birds all around the house. The birds apparently know that the cats are contained.

The lurker in the cover picture is Sol Duc. The grass is already deep.

My front and back lawn are still lawn, sort of. I have not used any weedkiller ever, and have lived here since 2000. Siberian squill and parsley and daffodils and forget-me-nots are busily invading the lawn. Also oregano and thyme. The deer are unenthused about most of these. They can come through the sometimes mown back of the house, but the front yard is fenced to protect my roses.

The deer do eat the squill. Maybe I could have a lawn of squill, mown by deer.

I like my lawn full of weeds. I am not very interested in grass and I like birds and insects much more. Ok, not cockroaches or fleas. We are not warm enough to have a lot of mosquitoes in my yard.

Maybe the deer like the leaves but not the flowers.

The wild has taken over the center of the block and now is creeping through my back yard and my front yard. And I am rooting for it all the way.