This is my first year trying to take care of a lawn. I have no idea what I’m doing, other than reading a lot of stuff on the internet. I’m trying to put down ryegrass seed, a type of grass that grows in winter, so things don’t look so dreary and colorless. Our backyard is a big dirt field anyway, it looked that way all summer, especially the hotter and hotter it got, the more baked and pale and dusty everything was. I’m not battling sun anymore, but it does feel kind of strange planting something in December, even though it’s not unheard of. I am going out every day looking at the seed on the ground and begging it, ‘please go into the ground, don’t just sit there!’ it looks sad and forlorn laying on top of our dusty texas dirt. I water it down saying, ‘please go germinate.’ I have to battle our cute whiny border collies who love to trample around in mud and want to herd the sprinkler, so I must let them, hoping they are not really mucking things up… or else I face the choice of leaving the sprinkler off and then having to fend off the the constant congregating of doves and grackles who have decided I am the neighborhood food source and are happily picking up my forlorn seed off the ground.
but something about doing this has kind of tapped into some deep farmer part of my soul. My grandfather was a farmer, had a big midwestern farm with just fields and forests and ponds around it, his father was a farmer who had a bee/honey farm, goats, cattle, pigs, dogs, cats and every assortment of life. I step out in my yard and I feel like the urban child disappears and something of the no-nonsense midwestern farmer’s daughter steps in. I have no idea what I’m doing but I really liked raking leaves this year. I wanted to rake all day, and preferably in the cold. I am from Michigan after all. I close my eyes and look out and feel my land growing and growing, I have acres and acres of land, some of it just to look at… and then I come back to myself and see I am still in the city but i have this little plot of land to try out my ancient self on.
