There’s No Simple Way to Make it OK
(Photo by Kasturi Laxmi Mohit on Unsplash) “What are you doing?” my neighbor calls out, pausing on his walk down our stretch of rural road, his breath visible, his lanky but imposing frame hunched against a late December breeze. The plastic grocery sack dangling from his gloved hand bulges a bit with the beer bottles, fast food wrappers, and other litter picked up along his path.
“Digging up saplings,” I answer, boot poised on my shovel.
“Why?”
“Because they’ll take over if I don’t.”
Left alone, a field will always try to revert to a forest. But he knows that. In his late 70s or early 80s, he’s lived out here and farmed his entire life.
What he really means is: Why are you doing it that way?
I could cut or burn this patch of land regularly or spray it with herbicides or some combination of both. But I planted native grasses and wildflowers to attract bees, dragonflies, butterflies, hummingbirds, and goldfinches. Herbicides would poison them and me. Cutting regularly would mean no blooms or seeds. I cut it once a year in late winter after the seeds have been well picked over by the birds. And because I live in a wood frame house, burning is a risk I’m not willing to take. So, in winter, on days when the ground is saturated from a heavy rain or melted snow, I tackle the year’s emerging saplings with my shovel.
“Do you ever get anything to eat out of there?” he asks, sauntering closer.
“No, just flowers.” Penstemon, butterfly weed, showy goldenrod. My produce are all from the grocery store or the farmer’s market. I’m not self-sustaining. Compared to my neighbor’s ordered rows of crops, my patch of meadow looks disheveled and unruly, especially this time of the year when his fields have been cleared of corn or soy and freshly planted with winter wheat.
“How much of that did you plant?” he asks, gesturing at my shaggy mess.
“About ninety-five percent of it,” I say, pressing the shovel into the soil, so wet from last week’s snow it has the give of softened butter. A few volunteer plants have strayed in over the years—privet, plantain, sweet everlasting.
“Well, sometimes it looks pretty,” he shrugs, continuing on his way.
Our conversation is not unusual. I’ve
