Dear Mom and Dad,
Well, Jonesie and I are going to buy dirt this spring. It's kind of a rite of passage for us. We've never lived anywhere long enough to sink into the terra infirma until now.
Sinking is what you do here instead of putting down roots or settling in. Settling in sounds comfortable, like you're adjusting to your new life. It's hard to adjust to the idea of a couple of inches margin of error between you and getting wet. It's a bit unsettling when the water laps against your door jamb during a summer rain storm and you have tide debris on your lawn. (In a further ironic twist, our roots don't sink or head down .They run along the top of the ground and try to tip over our house and ripple our sidewalks.)
We buy dirt in a mostly futile effort to stay higher than the street--which is also sinking. What I'd like to know (I think) is, are we sinking faster than the street? And if we are, how do we stop?
The other reason we are buying dirt is so that we can Landscape. Lately Jonesie has become dissatisfied with our Natural Wildlife Habitat approach to landscaping. It hasn't gotten us very far with the Yard of the Month judge.
The first thing to go was our killer ivy bushes. I liked the ivy. I felt safe knowing that I had body piercing ivy guarding my doors and windows. It would have been better if our ivy knew how to tell friend from foe, though, which is why I finally agreed that the ivy had to go. (The punctures are healing nicely. Thanks for the first aid tips.)
We also took down a couple of trees, foiling their plan to topple into the middle of our house when the next hurricane comes through. So now our yard looks post apocalyptic. Jonesie assures me that destruction is a crucial step in creation and we will have order, once he recovers from the destruction phase. And buys dirt.
I suggested we take a productive approach to our landscaping by planting rice or some other aquatic vegetation. It's very painful to watch our plants drown. But Jonesie says we need to go traditional if we want to win Yard of the Week.
For me, "traditional" is Wyoming rocks, sagebrush and dirt, but getting rocks here is a major problem, since they have to be imported. Sagebrush wouldn't do well here, either. Too much water. Jonesie wants to go traditional New Orleans style, only without the cement statues and birdbaths. We don't want to become a mosquito habitat.
The really big question is, can a couple of gomers from Wyoming find real happiness in a yard that is lush and verdant? Will they even be able to control it? Some friends of ours (also from Wyoming) made the mistake of planting a couple of watermelons in their backyard. Those melons were worse than two rabbits. The plants not only took over their yeard and covered the back of their house with vines, but they also invaded their neighbors yards. They finally just moved to get away from them. Didn't get any melons either. Those plants knew our friends were verdant impaired.
That's why I suspect that we will slowly, inexorably sink into the earth, surrounded by our wildly flowering paradise, while secretly longing for some red rock andn a dusty looking evergreen bush?
love,
pj
P.S. We didn't win Yard of the Week. We got beat out by a guy with an inscribed bench. Go figure.