Mixed Blessings

Something green is growing in my yard and it gives the impression that Spring has sprung, but let me tell you a secret. That stuff is always green here.

Like some alien vegetation who refuses to recognize the seasons, or be put down by a string of cold gray days, or even a blanket of snow, it peers at me defiantly. I believe it’s only admission of weakness is that it grows slower in the winter.

Two years ago, in anticipation of me moving in, my son mowed the three foot grass back there. That first mowing was left on the ground and when I raked it up there was mud. Out of that mud rose these green spiky creatures disguising themselves as fat grass.

Ignorance on my part and a naïve gratitude that my entire yard was not a muddy morass, a grassless swamp filled with spiders and worms and things that crawl, I was actually delighted to see it. Now I fight a never ending battle with the stuff.

It grows ten times faster than the anemic little patches of grass around it, holding its ground against almost all newcomers, but still, it provides a lush background for those delicate blue flowers and short conical purple ones that manage to push through here and there. Even the dandelions have a sort of stark beauty when surrounded by this stuff and I have to admit it looks rather fabulous sticking up out of the snow on sunny winter days.

Right now, when I barely have enough energy to look at it, I sometimes envy its strength, I don’t think it wakes up one morning too tired to get out of bed and I know it isn’t bothered by thoughts of me. Perhaps it feeds on the residue of time past, when I plowed through this world unhindered by a nameless disease that trails along behind me making life a bit of an uphill struggle sometimes.

And perhaps it is only here to entertain me when I have the energy for nothing else. And perhaps it has nothing to do with me at all! Some things don't, you know.