A Walker in the Suburbs

Saturday in the garden: more weeding and mulching. I dug up an especially obnoxious patch of weeds that looked a little like daisies except for the tall, shaggy stem and ugly leaves. Tenacious little devils, their roots were broad and deep.

The Japanese stilt grass had already done an end run around the flower bed so I attacked that too. That led me over to the newly shorn areas of the yard, where there were still sticks to pick up and move out.

By late afternoon my hands were filthy. The fine Virginia clay soil was under my nails and ground into my palms. I thought I might have brushed up against poison ivy, too. So on top of the dirt I could see was the urushiol oil I couldn’t.

So I took the Lava soap and had at it. Scrubbed my arms and legs and hands. Used the nail brush and a loofah to scrub away the most ground-in grime.

After 10 minutes I was getting there, and after 10 minutes more, I began to feel really clean.

You hear a lot these days about eating clean — choosing healthy, non-processed foods. Or about being clean — freeing ourselves of addictions or harmful practices.

With all due respect to these interpretations, after a long day in the garden nothing quite compares with the soap-and-water original.

I looked out the window at the garden today and spied a pink balloon where the peonies are supposed to be (the peonies that have taken a hit with the cold and rain). The balloon is an interloper. A visitor. A stowaway on the west wind.

From what little girl’s birthday party did it arrive? From what sticky little hand did it detach and float away?  Did it break free from a backyard boquet to fly over tree tops and land gently among the day lilies?

Wherever it came from it arrived intact, ribbon attached and almost fully inflated.

If the garden is to become a destination for wayward balloons might it also attract other lost items? Socks and keys and earrings?

A garden of lost and founds — now there’s a thought.

I knew at once it was something different: longer, stronger, taking up more of the sky.  Broad wings, white head and tail with a supple, muscular stroke. It was over my head and beyond me before I had a good glimpse, but I knew at once this was no hawk.

In a few wing beats it was two houses away, hundreds of feet above me. With shaded eyes I watched it soar out of sight. Surely it was an eagle. I knew of nothing else that would be that imposing, that confident in the sky.

No more than two minutes later the bird was above me once again. It must have turned left at the woods and circled round. Now I had a clearer look, could observe the long, steady flap of those black wings, could be sure that the head was white. Though it was no doubt looking for food, it was calm and unhurried — out for the avian version of a Sunday drive.

I have seen eagles at the lake, at the beach and on a trip to Alaska. But never before had I seen one over the house. It was a good way to usher in the new year, glimpsing such a wild thing in flight. I thought of a passage from Henry Beston’s Outermost House, describing a flock of swans: “Their passing was more than music, and from their wings descended the old loveliness of earth which both affirms and heals.”

Photo:  AnimalFactsGuide.com

This summer, in an excess of exuberance or just poor planning I bought three cherry tomato plants and situated them in pots on the deck. This is where I’ve put them the last few years, but I failed to realize how mature — and how greedy for space — the climbing rose had become. The result is a tangled mess of vines — roses among the thorns among the tomatoes.

I like this wild, uninhibited look but I’m not sure the plants do. They seem peeved and confused, wanting more space and light than they’ve been given. Tomato yield is down and the roses look peaked in their second bloom.

So already I have plans for next year. Extending the pergola for the climbing rose. Finding a sunny corner of the yard (growing ever less shady thanks to the dying oaks) for the tomatoes, maybe throwing in a pepper plant or two. A space for each plant — and each plant in its space.