On nature oriented gardening

June 1, 2021 – 100 days to offload countdown #96

I am lucky enough to live in a house with a bigger garden than is the norm around these parts of the world. During this ongoing pandemic a luxury I would be hard pressed to put a value on.

Our garden is home to hedgehogs, salamanders of some kind or another and anything not offended, eaten, or killed for sport by free roaming cats – a necessary pest control if you are living in a wooden house if you ask me. We leave a large part of the plant growth mostly to itself – mind you, I mow the moss lawn, but leave it standing as high as possible, and leave a large patch completly unattended - grass, flower, weed, whatever grows there grows, not a beautiful piece of land, not a sea of petals in the spring - but rich in life.

It would be less work to trim and fence everything in and keep it under control – wild growth is hard to tame once that need arrises, and it inevitably will. Our neighbours are not cantakerous and leave us be, not commenting on the state of affairs this side of the fence. The more I feel the need not to intrude on their side. Whenever the need arises to reign in the abundance of growth, as not to intrude into the tidy parks surrounding our wilderness, I develop doubts and consider a more civilized order of things. But these doubts don’t linger.