Mark Lane's Take on My Yard

cross creek

Mark Lane’s Take on My Yard

By Suwanneerefugee ⋅ April 7, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

I confess. My ability to plow through books like Havana does through food and sticks has gone by the wayside ever since I returned from Africa. I’m still working on Rawlings’ Cross Creek, which I started back in December. I worked on finishing this book while I was in the hospital these past two days (BTW-I’m out).

The other book that is my bathroom read, because the stories are that short is Mark Lane’s Sandspurs. This books is a compilation of the articles he has written while a columnist for the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

I was reading the chapter called Shame and Guilt can’t move the Darwinian Gardner the other day and thought about my yard, especially since I’ve had a bum leg. In this article Lane purports himself as the Darwinian Gardner. He is asked this question by a fictitious reader:

Q: Have you–from a strictly lawn-and-garden standpoint–no shame at all?

A: I have more shame than a Florida legislator but not enough to be inconvenient when its sunny outside. The Darwinian Gardner is very unclear about this whole good/bad thing when it comes to lawn care. He’s not a conscientious objector in nature’s ongoing war–that’s the Transcendental Gardner. (Just follow the annoying tinkle of wind chimes until you find her yard.) Nor is he a Zen gardener who spends hours raking pebbles. No, he is content to watch nature, see how things are lining up, and then pretend he was always on the winning side.

He considers himself something of a Nietzschean gardener working on a yard that’s beyond good and evil and free of the petty social conventions that yoke mankind to angry and loud machines powered by small horse powered gasoline engines.

Amen, Mark! Thanks for describing me and my yard so well. If I was in a big brother neighborhood (i.e. HOA), I would have been scolded many times over. Here, I can allow the Polk County in me to shine brightly and watch every type of weed bloom.

How is your yard doing? Which gardener are you? Transcendental? Zen? or Nietzschean like me?

gainesville365

There's something to be said for natural selection. Just let it all hang out, SR!
Nicolezmomma

I am conflicted on regulation. Here in the City, we all live 60 feet from each other.

A few years ago, our neighborhood was voting on whether the City should require a design review before anyone could build in our neighborhood to ensure it would be in keeping with the historic neighborhood. Everyone we knew, as well as us, was against it. It was pretty much a sure thing that the design review wouldn't pass.

We all went to the meeting to vote. As the meeting went on, people said they should be able to build whatever they want, with lots of examples. The meeting culminated with one man loudly saying he likes spaceships. If he wanted to build a purple spaceship on his front yard, he should have the right to do it.

Everyone, including us, voted in favor of the neighborhood design review. None of us wanted to look at the purple spaceship.
Nicolezmomma

Sorry, I didn't respond to your yard question on that last. The HOA got me. We enjoy growing weeds too.
Shoreman

Living, as I do, on 5 acres of land that looks like pictures you see of Lake Tahoe, yard, garden, grass is out of the question. Yard, I do the best I can to control as little as I can, when the snow goes away. Garden, gave up after 5 Summers of getting nothing from the vege's I planted. Stuff just won't grow in the soil. Grass, if you plant it, you have to water and mow it. Most of my land is weeds, trees, and dirt. Easy maintenance.

Mark
David McRee

We have lovely patches of blue toadflax in bloom in both front and back yards.

We are on a high sand ridge that was once pine flatwoods, so nothing grows easily here. We pray for weeds so we don't have to walk in the dirt.

Yard probably won't get cut until the toadflax goes to seed.
Suwanee Refugee

365-Lane calls it survival of the fittest.

Momma-A purple space ship should have been over in Titusville. It would have fit right in.

Shoreman-My green thumb is still up for debate. I've got some tomato plants growing upside down. We'll see how I do.

David-I'm actually enjoying the toadflax in my backyard as well. I hate to cut it down. Maybe I can make a toadflax maze instead of a corn maze.
Robert V. Sobczak

Utilitarian!

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