Lord of the Leaves

For those of my loyal readers who have patiently awaited the exciting episode I HAVE to get around to writing sooner or later, your patience is about to be asked to stick around for a little longer. Today, the yard, covered in leaves, huge piles of leaves, small piles of leaves, huge spans of sand still covered in layers of leaves yet to be raked up, and mixtures of both, thanks to the habit of trees to dump on your nicely raked ground after you've raked it up, ruled the day. A man might be master of his domain, but today the leaves turned the tables.

Now, being a guy, and a husband, I would be more than happy to just let sleeping leaves lie. Hey, they are all going to break down and rot and return to the earth anyway, eventually, right? After all they've been through, who am I to go shoving them around, piling them on top of each other, and then feeding them down the throat of some gasoline powered monster, only to go spreading their poor shredded remains back on the ground anyway? I sometimes wonder what their parents, the trees from which they were shed, are thinking as they witness this horror?

There's no lawn here at Pendragon hold that needs to be uncovered; nope, nothing but sand, with a scattering of weeds attempting to get past the hungry predation of our goats. The front of the house has something resembling a lawn, only because it's not fenced off and subject to the oppression of eating machines that are capable of committing plant genocide. I never have to actually mow it anymore. A day of grazing controls the growth quite nicely. The trick is tying those four legged lawnmowers out on lines in such a precise way as to allow them access to what I WANT them to eat, while keeping them away from those lucky plants I don't want them to murder. So, sometimes, a mechanical trim is in order to take care of those areas, which sometimes resembles voting districts drawn up by republicans.

Well, the wife's shade garden has a remarkable appetite for mulch. The leaf mulch does an excellent job of keeping down the weeds and vines and other nasty little things that thrive in this sort of environment. Plants we LIKE, for one reason or another, haven't a banana split's chance in hell of surviving without lots of compost and manure as well as water. Sand only supports rather aggravating kinds of plant life, like palmetto bushes, and thorny vines and such horrors. It was probably Florida's attempt to make humans want to take one look and go back where they came from, but alas, it didn't work. Hell, even the everglades, with it's vast expanse of saw-grass and swamp, didn't stand a chance against the snowbirds determined to move away from snow and ice and build bingo halls and shuffleboards to keep them occupied while they waited to die. If nature offends thee, pave it over!

Well, here at Pendragon hold, we have a truce with Mother Nature. We just tidy the place up a bit, not dumping tons of fertilizers and poisons on it in order to artificially prop up some foreign ecosystem that couldn't exist here otherwise. We get our water from an onsite well, and anything that percolates down through this sand is going to eventually end up in the drinking water. Unfortunately, this gives those damn fire-ants the upper hand around here, so the best I can do for now is hose their mounds away from places I don't want them, although I sometimes break down and dust those bastards with the bare minimum of ant killer, praying it will break down before polluting the ground water. And, we compost EVERYTHING that can possibly be composted, and return it to the earth whenever we garden or plant things.

This place overall is not pretty, at least not compared to the manicured lawns of the gated communities surrounding us. And thanks to the poisonous overkill needed in order to maintain those pretty little lawns, the St Johns River here in NorthEast Florida is starting to get choked with huge algae blooms every summer, having been overloaded with runoff rich in nutrients. Me, personally, I am rather proud to live on this acre of sand, sans the lawn, in favor of just getting along with Mother Nature, perfect green outdoor carpets be damned. It's hard enough work just dealing with this place on it's own terms; I would already be worn down physically and bankrupt if I attempted to turn this entire acre into a putting green.

I don't really feel like I OWN this place. I'm in reality more of a guest. Until the mortgage, if ever, is paid off, I can't even claim to be a home OWNER anyway. If either one of us lost our jobs, we'd be back to filling out applications to live in some tight little box six inches from equally oppressed neighbors, and the very idea of that happening strikes terror into my heart. While I have the honor and privilege of living on this little acre of sand, I am going to at least try to honor it by providing stewardship that doesn't include bringing nature to it's knees. Many years from now this place may be totally paved over after some developer drives the tenants away to build something that has no need to be here, but until then, I will not insult this land which for 6 years has nurtured me, my wife, and my family.

Back to the leaves. I managed today to eliminate another very large pile of those suckers, and I paid dearly for it. I am sore. My head and upper respiratory system is asking me what the hell happened. I ache. I am tired. Of course, the wife, being a woman, was out there with me, raking in the new mulch I was producing, and I can't honestly say she didn't work as hard as I did, perhaps even more, but true to the nature of women, she is in the kitchen preparing dinner for me and the kids who are coming to visit tonight, as though she had spent the day at a spa or something. How do they do it? Is it strictly lazy and wimpy me, or are you other husbands familiar with this strange species of amazon rabbit that embraces work so insidiously? Bob bless em, though, I am not complaining. I'm too tired. And hungry. And despite that deep seated resentment I KNOW lies within her heart as she takes care of me, I also know a measure of love compensates for that understandable feeling, and I am blessed, and will be well taken care of. What more can a guy ask for?