It is November now; our incipient meadow is put to bed. But I remember back a few weeks: the September sun was high in the cloudless sky - and hot. My level back received the full effect of its rays, as I was on my hands and knees in a weedy field. It could have been July or August, save for the cricket din all around me.
What was I doing on my hands and knees? Yanking weeds. I am part of the B Street Restoration Project in Provincetown. Our mission is to transform a weedy field into a flourishing meadow. The area is actually a (long-ago) filled wetland bordering Shank Painter Pond; it is full of invasive weeds and poison ivy. If we can replace the invasives with native grasses and flowers, we will attract more butterflies and bees, more pollinators, and increase the diversity of invertebrate and vertebrate life- especially birds.
Rather than be overwhelmed by an acre of weeds, our group will be attacking them piecemeal. Each of us has adopted a four foot by four foot area, staked it off, put our name on a paint stirrer in its center- and it is ours. What happens in my plot is up to me: I am taking out the bad guys and putting in some good guys, and keeping the balance in my favor. I am playing God in my little four by four universe.
I don’t think I’ve spent so much time on my hands and knees since I was an infant. The perspective was different down there. My hands in the sandy soil -- I was paying attention to its texture, its smell, its various components- minute fibers, a grub or two, an occasional worm, even some tiny pebbles (where did they come from on this outer Cape sand bar?). There is a universe below us, as mysterious as the heavens above.
My principle nemesis is the Spotted Knapweed (Centaurea maculosa). It is prolific, it is everywhere- and a close examination reveals why: its crazy Doctor Seuss-like pink flowers give way to multiple seed pods; and when I pull it out of the ground I find a long and resisting tap root. Inevitably, a tip of it breaks off: “I’ll be back!” it jeers in its vegetative insolence. The many grasses are also a challenge: they have sidebar rhizomes that burrow and ripple through the soil.
My plot laid bare (except for the natives: Pearly Everlasting, Wood Sorrel , a Narrow-leafed Pinweed), I began to plant it. I chose plants safe for fall planting: three different milkweeds, two kinds of goldenrods, two of asters, bee balm, and other flowers and grasses- the tufted beauty of Little Bluestem- and sedges.
For each, I made a small chamber in the earth and gently placed it in its new home, tamped down the ground around it, and watered. Have you ever talked to a plant? It is an expansive experience.
In the background was the noise of traffic on Shank Painter Road, a construction project on Brown Street- some huge beast of a machine roaring its ridicule of my little trowel… planes overhead.
But I was in my little four by four universe. Yes, the world may be swiftly going to hell: glaciers melting, sea level rising, shorelines crumbling, species dwindling…What to do?
Plant flowers and look to the spring.
