Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

Nature's Reclamation

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I'm so far behind on Graveyard Dirt shit my ass ain't even laughing anymore. I've got so many things to show you, so many fucking stories to tell and projects to talk about and jokes to mess up and mad-brilliant-stupid ideas to tentatively explain and photos that perfectly - PERFECTLY! - illustrate all of the above (well, in most cases). And HOW do I decide to tackle this monumental undertaking? By writing about our (previously) overgrown front yard. (<- You want priories? I got them RIGHT HERE, motherfucker.)

I'll try to keep this yarn short (LOLOLOLOL, I KNOW, I KNOW, LET'S PRETEND I CAN BE SUCCINCT, THOUGH, OKAY?), because some of you might've heard various renditions about a billion times already.

Mr. Awesome, my father-in-law, was once the custodian of this house and the property it sits on. What maintenance he could manage he performed himself, and he personally took care of the landscaping and maintaining of said landscaping. About 6-8 years ago he dug up (literally) the entire lawn - and what he didn't manage to dig up he deliberately snuffed with plant killer - and transformed our front yard into a giant dirt pit.

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Little did I know that immediately after trashing the front fucking yard (we're talking about an entire fucking yard totally scraped clean of anything green and living) he benched himself. For, like, forever. The destruction of the lawn - and all of the landscaping - was his swan song, and none of us knew it at the time. Because it was early days (in the sense of me assuming a more active, aggressive caretaker role in this house) I didn't intervene, thinking he had some sort of super-big-huge plan I didn't know about (or couldn't see intuitively).

I gave him way too much fucking credit. The front yard - which I eventually renamed "the dirt yard" - sat barren, abandoned and untouched for years. (Okay, okay, that's a half lie; Mr. Awesome, in the first several years of the wasteland's existence, did routinely go outside with plant killer and spray anything green that had managed to seed and germinate itself in his precious dirt lawn.)

Every subdivision has its "crackhouse". Amongst carefully manicured and pedicured pieces of property there's always one fucking house where grass doesn't grow, where garbage (or rusted, partially broken toys and lawn furniture) pops up like prolific fungi and there's usually 1-3 cars, in various states of disrepair, sitting on, or near, the crackhouse. As a kid cycling past on my bike I couldn't help but stare at the community eyesore, wondering what the living fuck the people were on, and how they managed to not give a fuck and bow under silent peer pressure to conform to the subdivision's standards of appearance.

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To answer my own childhood questions (seeing as how I'm an unwilling inhabitant of this subdivision's "crackhouse"):

1.) Pot, most of the time.

2.) Some members of this house, the ones who actually execute the final decision on anything (cough, in-laws, cough), didn't see any problem with having a giant archeological excavation site instead of a lawn, parking two broken cars in front of the house and throwing indoor vegetative waste outdoors on barren land (you want shit to stick out? throw gigantic fucking banana leaves onto a flat expanse of dirt and just leave it there like it's fucking camouflaged amongst soil and rocks).

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Fed the fuck up with seeing the dirt yard year in and year out I finally decided to do something about it last year - plant motherfucking vegetables. (Why the fuck not? There was a surplus of soil readily available, and it had been something like 6-8 years since my in-laws even touched the naked earth out front and surely something - something the entire family would've benefited from - was better than nothing, right?) The fucking second they saw me disturbing the dirt yard's soil they came racing out to inform me that they were TOTALLY going to do something with the yard THAT YEAR but they just hadn't told either of us (Italics and I).

I didn't buy it. Italics didn't buy it. And if you're familiar with the tale of the trash heap/non-existent BBQ you'll know why neither of us bought it. (Not sure what the fuck I'm talking about? Read this (dig deep! the explanation's there!); everything'll make sense.) The fact that they tried to pull the same bullshit again absolutely blew me the fuck away. In fact, Internet, I was downright insulted with the insinuation that suddenly, after 6-8 years of not giving a fuck about the condition of the front yard, they had SUPER-MAJOR-AWESOME PLANS once they saw ME show interest in the wasteland they had created and walked away from.

I got told they had plans for the front yard. I gave them my best "not even MARGINALLY fucking impressed" Clair Huxtable expression and informed THEM that that was great, but I was growing vegetables in the dirt yard this year and they could do whatever the fuck they wanted NEXT year. (Hey, that gave them an entire year to plan, organize and get their act together so they were ready to go the second 2010 hit. It actually gave them a fucking EXCUSE not to do anything for one whole fucking year.)

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Italics' parents wouldn't leave me and my year with the dirt yard alone. I didn't have a moment's fucking peace working outside. Every single fucking time - and I'm not exaggerating here in the slightest - I went outside to clock in one of them would come outside to remind me that they were going to undo everything I did this year. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. It wasn't a matter of IF, it was a matter of WHEN.

("ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO PLANT VEGETABLES? WOULDN'T YOU RATHER PLANT {INSERT AN UNSUBTLE ATTEMPT TO GET ME TO PLANT WHAT THEY WANTED, WHERE THEY WANTED}?" and "YOU SEE ALL OF THOSE ROCKS YOU'VE BEEN PULLING OUT OF THE GROUND BY HAND FOR SIX HOURS A DAY? KEEP THEM BECAUSE WE'RE GOING TO THROW THEM BACK INTO THE YARD NEXT YEAR.")

While my scraped hands and fingers bled from sifting earth to remove debris and rocks with my bare fucking hands Mr. Awesome would come outside to inform me that every fucking rock I pulled out he was just going to throw "back into the yard" once I was done. And every single fucking time I wanted to shout "MOTHERFUCKER, I'M NOT EVEN DONE PULLING THE FUCKING ROCKS OUT OF THE FUCKING GROUND. AT LEAST LET ME BE DONE WITH THIS FUCKING JOB BEFORE YOU BEGIN TELLING ME YOU'RE GOING TO UNDO EVERYTHING I FUCKING DID. JESUS EFFING CHRIST." but, instead, I got Italics to do it for me (they aren't MY parents).

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After one too many "ARE YOU SURE?", "WOULDN'T YOU RATHER...?" and "NEXT YEAR WE'RE GOING TO..." I walked away. Now, of course, I'm sort've ashamed that I let them wear me down, but I was totally unable to derive any enjoyment from something that's meant to be relaxing. I left them their goddamn dirt yard and walked the fuck away. Ultimately, I decided it wasn't worth the hassle I was getting and turned my focus on expanding my container garden in the back.

Take a wild fucking guess what happened. Go ahead. That's right, nothing. They got their effing dirt yard a fucking year early and they did NOTHING. After all the bullshit I went through, the talk of SUPER-HUGE-BIG PLANS and the power struggle this entire household experienced over a bald front yard they decided they didn't actually want to do anything, but, for some reason, they couldn't reach that conclusion until after I threw my hands up in the air, all exasperated, and finally said "FINE, TAKE IT".

(Just between you and me? I think they finally reached the point where they didn't want to piss me off anymore. I know Italics engaged in a shock and awe campaign on my behalf and pointed out previous situations where I was stopped from doing something that'd benefit the house and family because they had BIG, GRAND PLANS that conflicted with my proposal, and in every instance I backed off they never followed through with those BIG, GRAND PLANS and this was just ANOTHER example of their inability to start, let alone finish, something.)

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They didn't take the dirt yard, I didn't take the dirt yard, but Nature? Nature took the fucking dirt yard. After beating Mr. Awesome back with a proverbial stick, seeds from various indigenous flora, for the first time in years, actually took root. There was enough "growth" last year to warrant the "lawn" being cut for the first time in nearly a decade. From a not-so-distant distance it actually appeared like we had motherfucking grass, just like all of the non-crackhouse houses.

I don't want to be premature, but...it feels like they've backed off. I mean, like, "HOLY SHIT, SHE'S FUCKING CRAZY, JUST LET HER DO WHAT THE FUCK SHE WANTS AND DON'T MAKE FUCKING EYE CONTACT" backed off. That's cool, that's fine, I'm happy to deal with social rabies if it means my pot smoking ass can (figuratively) move out of the crackhouse. Cause, like, I've got plans, baby. Super huge, terrifically awesome plans - but that's another story for a different day.

With an exception of planting garlic, beets and carrots (the later two didn't really perform well; the front yard faces north so they aren't getting as much sun as they need, at least I'll be harvesting a decent garlic crop) I've otherwise "neglected" the front yard. Deliberately, though, just to see what Nature would sow and give me. And, my fucking God, it gave me lots: pansies, feverfew (WTF? I gave up trying to grow feverfew over five fucking years ago because nothing ever fucking germinated - now I have it growing everywhere EXCEPT the containers I sowed it in!), bellflowers, ragwort, violets, thistle, white clover, buttercups and a host of meadow grasses whose names I don't know.

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Much to the chagrin of my in-laws I refused to cut the "lawn". Well, it wasn't an outright refusal, but whenever they complained about the height of the growing grass I'd dismiss their anxieties with a polite "yeah, we're getting to that, we just need to do a couple of things first". I tried REALLY FUCKING HARD not to get pissed whenever my mother-in-law would shake me down with stories about people receiving fines from the council for not taking care of their property, but it was struggle (mostly because she obsessively kept mentioning it).

Holy fuck, dude, if the fucking council didn't fine us when our entire front yard was nothing but fucking dirt and there were two broken cars parked outside next to the exposed dirt I don't think they're going to fine us for some fucking grass that's knee high. I mean, for fuck's sake, how is having an overgrown lawn NOT an improvement of our previous situation? Before we had NOTHING, now we have SOMETHING.

Because I prefer my grass unruly and wild I've allowed it to grow all year long and watched, month by month, as the front yard slowly transformed into a meadow. Eventually the three large rocks dotting the small earthen mound between the rowan and sycamore disappeared beneath a canopy of stalks, leaves and flowers. Eventually the soil was swallowed by green (and yellow and purple and white), and the wildness grew to a height where Summer's breeze rippled through it like a field of shivering wheat.

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It was the meadows of my youth where I'd drape white translucent curtains over the bowing seedheads of wild grasses to create an ethereal canopy. And I'd sink - naked (oh, my preference for "naked" goes back a long, long way) - into a sea of green, lying on my back within my nomadic fairy hut, secluded and perfectly hidden in the rich grasslands that bordered our house. I didn't need to drag out curtains to create my sidhe yurt or throw off all of my clothes and sit in towering grass to appreciate - I mean, REALLY appreciate - the view from outside the kitchen window. Seeing it, everyday, was enough. (At least for now, heh.)

The meadow, unfortunately, had to be tamed. We let it grow for as long as possible, but Italics' folks return from the States in about a week and no amount of storytelling ("BUT I CAN'T CUT THE GRASS BECAUSE IT REMINDS ME OF BEING ALL LORD OF THE FLIES AS A KID!") or excuses ("THE WEATHER'S BEEN BAD EVERY SINGLE DAY SINCE YOU GUYS LEFT!") will fly. A few days ago I finally harvested the thistle and feverfew and gave Italics the green light to take the rest down. He managed part of the yard, but not all of it.

Later on today I'm hoping to step outside and pick the violets and pansies (to dry the flowers for future witchcrafting) and gather some of their seeds before they disappear beneath the blades of the lawnmower. Once the long grass has a chance to dry we'll gather it up and store it for Christmas, where it'll be spread beneath our kitchen table during Sviata Vechera ("Holy Supper", eaten on Christmas Eve) to honor domesticated animals, and then stored away again until Spring (Bride's Day, Imbolc) when we'll offer it to local lactating ewes.

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