In praise of growth

The past few months we have worked incessantly on improving our backyard. We have about an acre and much of it is flat and sunny and grassy, but the lovely shaded area where it is cool enough to play in the summer somehow managed, over the years we didn’t do anything to the yard when I was pregnant and then Baby was young, to lose all of its grass and become a vast, sad area of dropped leaves, errant sticks, and dirt dirt dirt.

In an effort to improve things, I raked up everything into a huge pile, intending to immolate it, but the drought meant we couldn’t burn yard trash and lo it sat there for many months until, well, most of it became mulch. So then Husband moved the leaves into the side yard, burned the sticks and branches, and Baby and I spread out the mulch all over the bare dirt (see picture #2). Somewhere in there Husband created a totally awesome play area with cypress mulch in it for Baby’s slide, sandbox, etc. Then we had a bunch of top soil delivered, and after a couple of weeks of backbreaking labor on almost entirely Husband’s part, it was all spread out, covered with grass seed and wheat straw, watered (semi-illegally), and set to grow. In the last two pictures you can see the grass coming in, beautifully green. The last one is from today.

This is kind of an Earth Day post in that it’s a pleasure to watch things grow and I think it’s amazing to see, kind of like watching children grow up, but faster and easier. It’s so wonderful to be able to enjoy the natural world, and Baby and I typically spend hours a day outside and we’re lucky to have an earth to do so in/on. And of course, spring is always a thrill. But in other ways, given the artificiality of grass lawns and the water and fertilizer etc. used to support them, well, it’s not all that earth-friendly, though the grass will help the erosion to abate. At any rate, it makes our backyard even more fun for Baby, and that’s my big concern in life–Baby’s fun-o-meter. I want her to love the outdoors, which she does, and I want her to continue to have an outdoors to enjoy.