A Story Gone to Seed
By Bill, posted on 10/26/2005
It's been a difficult year here at the farm. The one constant of life is change. A claim that is as true as it may seem contradictory. Lives change, sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse. Sometimes both simultaneously.
Dicken's began "A Tale of Two Cities" by writing "It was the best of times and the worst of times." I always paused when I considered that line and the ones that followed, not understanding the contradiction. But that's the kind of year it's been.
Being the best of times and the worst of times it's easy to let slide some of the more mundane things. I bet Charles Darnay didn't have time to cut his grass during his summer of discontent/exultation. I doubt he had time to give his grass a second thought with a revolution going on.
I consider myself a good deal luckier than Mr. Darnay. Partly because I had time to cut most of my grass and, much more significantly, because no one has tried to stick my neck in a guillotine. At least not today. Regardless of how "Nobler" it might be I like to think I have a good head on my shoulders and would rather not be put in a position to "stick my neck out."
But I digress from grass. That's where I was heading: grass. I found time to keep the front and back lawns mowed. More or less. But the pasture just never got to the top of the list and has grown into a wild grassland. It's depth is deceptive. The undergrowth is so dense the grass only looks about two feet high. But when you attempt to walk in it your foot disappears into a foot or more of dense vegetation that you thought was the ground.
I was terribly embarrassed over the overgrown and decrepit appearance of our pasture. But as fall approached it began to get interesting. All of the grasses began to seed. When we built the chicken run I had to mow a path through the middle of this sea of grass. I would liken it to Moses parting the red sea but having to constantly back up a bogged down mower to have another go at a particularly dense bit of greenery does not lend itself to such exquisite metaphor. It was a downright hack job.
In the weeks that passed my farmhand (age 4) and I began exploring our grassland. The quantity and variety of seed that that we found was astounding. One variety of everyday front-lawn grass sends up shoots with huge clusters of seeds. One single cluster will yield an overflowing handful of grass seed. Another variety sends up stems up to 5 feet in the air to allow the wind to carry away the seed. Everywhere, too, there were tiny flowers of every color.
We collected bags of different seeds and pods for farmhand's show-and-tell at school. We collected half a 5-gallon bucket full of goldenrod flowers to try and make a cloth dye. "This is the most fun I ever had," says the farmhand about the goldenrod. We learned how sharp the impossibly slender thorns of a bull-thistle seed pod are. Not so much fun, that part, as poignant.
The side of the pasture where I feed the chickens is peppered with corn plants from kernels the blighters missed. Recently a "mystery plant" I was keeping an eye on turned out to be sunflower and began to bloom. These were from a huge bucket of mixed seeds I acquired from my parent's house after my Mom passed. Figured I'd let the chickens have them. We had our first frost a few days ago so I cut the most vocal sunflower and put it in the kitchen where it continues to smile on us.
I've heard that certain American Indian Tribes believe life is naught but a collection of stories and the quality of a life is determined by the richness of your stories. I would call them experiences but I suppose, at the end of the day, it's the same thing.
Money can't buy good stories. Closed-mindedness chases them away. Openness invites them in.
Our friend from India is visiting us tonight. Since the last time I wrote of him he has become a regular guest whenever he is in country. Our farmhand had opted for blueberry pancakes for dinner and invited our guest to join us. He had never had a pancake before, much less a blueberry one. I watched with delight as we gave him a new experience, a new story.
They were damned good pancakes.
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