More Green Please!

 

by Pa Rock

Farmer in Spring

Every year I say that I will do less in the yard because taking care of my very big yard wears me down. I tell myself that I will mow less,  not put out so many flowers so that I will not have to carry so much water during the dog days of August, and add no permanent plants to the landscape.  But then as spring arrives with its warm breezes and chirpy birds, I crank up the lawnmower, begin looking for the rake and shovel - and soon I am right back at it.

This past Sunday I mowed for the second time this season.  It was somewhat chilly, but still I had a good mow.  Even with a breakdown that lasted ten minutes or so (I hit a  really big rock that stopped the mower, and it took a few minutes to get it up and running again), I still managed to knock almost an hour off of the mowing time of the first mow of the season fifteen days prior.  The first is always the hardest because there is so much to pick up or grind up along the way, but by the second mowing most of the obstacles that have accumulated over the winter are gone.

While I did not deliberately go out looking for any new permanent plants to add to the yard, I came across one anyway.  A week or so ago I was at the local grocery and just strolled by the plant section in the parking lot.  I wasn't looking to buy anything - just being nosey - but of course I found a Bartlett Pear tree that was tall and healthy and literally reached out begging me to take it home.

But I resisted.

Yesterday morning I was back at the same store and, just out of curiosity, looked to see if "my" pear tree was still there - and it was - a sure sign that destiny was at play.  That afternoon I returned with my son and the family pickup truck and took "our" tree home where Nick managed to get it in the ground as the day was waning.  Today that fine young pear tree sits outside of the window where I type each day, and in a few years, though probably not during my tenure at the window, it will be dropping its beautiful fruit on the ground and attracting all manner of squirrels, bees, and ants!   And the next owner of Rock's Roost will have me to thank for the mess in his yard!

I have one full-grown pear tree in the back yard that I suspect is also a Bartlett.  The pears are delicious, though I seldom manage to get any of them.  The deer gather around the tree before the pears are anywhere near ripe, and they literally stand on their back feet reaching for the limbs in order to pick and eat the delicious fruits.  Some of the deer also butt their heads against the pear tree's trunk in order to shake the young pears loose from their branches.

I doubt the deer will be forward enough to attack a pear tree that its right in front of my house, but during a prolonged drought when food is scarce, who knows?

(Last year I added three beautiful rose bushes to the landscape, and they all were magnificent the entire summer - and they are coming back nicely this year, too.  A few years before that I brought in several young dogwoods, and they are currently in full bloom.  Other additions over the years include several more roses, a fig bush, and a holly bush that is slowly transforming into a tree.  I am also nurturing a few volunteer paw-paw saplings that will expand that little grove as well - and I have three nice young sassafras trees that I have raised from volunteer saplings.)

Now that I have gone back to mowing just as much as I did last year, and now that I brought in a new pear tree, it is probably inevitable that I will be hitting the local nursery in the next few days and dragging home some potted plants as well.  Maintaining a nice yard an addiction, one that I seem helpless to defeat!

Happy spring!