My yard, in a round about way, is very nice. It’s large and unkempt. Rocks litter the dirt patches that surround the home, and weeds fill in where the rocks aren’t. There are other strips and patches to- those where the utility companies sliced wide scars into the property, those where the barn and house once stood, and those where trucks got stuck in the spring mud. Even with this, somehow, the property still looks nice enough. There are trees that line the borders where my acres turn into someone elses acres, and there is a hay crop across the front that I may or may not someday harvest, depending on my personal hay consumption needs.
Out back, the patio is new and it’s nice enough. I should put some shrubs or plants around it to soften its stoney edges, but I haven’t, yet. Beyond the patio there is more of my most prolific crop- mud- and then some grass. The grass isn’t grass like you’d expect it to be. Rather, it’s grass in the way that the grass in Florida is grass. It crunches under foot and makes barefoot walking a generally uncomfortable undertaking. This grass, as I call it, is really just hay that I coerced into a low pattern, my argument against the farming community being that hay is really just super tall grass, right? Am I right?
The grass weaves in and around the garden, where some plants grow and others feign growth and instead slowly die in their place. There are grape plants, because I like jam, and there are apple trees, because I like to feed the deer the bark from those trees. There are some herbs and some vegetables, and at least one row has been planted with plants that my wife thinks are cantaloupes. They are growing like crazy, these cantaloupe, and she thinks they are cantaloupes because these vibrant, quick growing plants grew right out of the area that she slung the seeds out of a mature cantaloupe whose flesh was devoured by my children a few weeks ago. I have another theory as to this cantaloupe, and it starts and ends with these cantaloupe plants- the ones that we transplanted from the margins to a starring role in the garden- are really just weeds. In fact, I’m nearly positive that these are weeds, because nothing else in the garden looks particularly alive or well, excepting these cantaloupes/weeds. Time will tell.
Past the hay lawn and the weed garden is a very large tree. It’s shaped like a Menorah. It’s tall. It has many branches that trunk out from the main trunk, and it’s perfect for little children to climb on and, at least once, to fall from. We don’t know what this tree is, though we have theories. I think it might be a Boxelder. My mom said it might be a Sycamore, but my mother knows trees as well as my wife knows cantaloupe seedlings. My dad just looks at it and doesn’t even guess what it is. My brothers have seen the tree and don’t care. I think someday I’ll look it up on the interwebs to see what it is, but that day is not today.
Beyond the Menorah tree is a field, a great, big, wide and deep field. There are things growing in it, all in rows, but those things aren’t tall enough so that I can see what they are from my distance. The crop choices around here are pretty much relegated to corn or soybeans, so I’ll guess that the crop is either corn or it might be soybeans. Either way, it’s fine by me. The field is pretty, and when it changes color in late August and into the fall, the golden hues of drying corn and/or soybeans will make for a most pleasing backdrop. The Menorah tree will be happy, because it will stand out against that golden background, and kids will climb on it while adults speculate what it might be, and everyone will agree that it is a nice tree. And a nice field. And a generally nice yard.
But my yard is something else too. It’s all of the things above, plus a bunch of Mulberry trees. But one extra thing that it is isn’t so praiseworthy. My yard, for all of it’s farmy pastoralness, is also supremely boring. Don’t get me wrong, I love it and all, and I feel blessed to live where I live, but grass and trees don’t change much. Sure, they change with the seasons, but everything does that. Green grass will turn to brown grass, but I can’t really celebrate that. On a macro level, these seasonal changes will be nice. But on a micro level, if we sit on my patio for an hour or four, we won’t get to see anything different during hour four that we saw on minute one. Grass is nice, Menorah trees are too. Small apple trees are cute and rogue cantaloupe seedlings are inspiring, but they are also all very, painfully, boring.
I had company for Father’s Day. My family came over, and we sat in the sun on the new, naked patio. I cooked pizzas in my pizza oven (more on that later), and things were generally pleasant. And then, after some eating and some sitting, the general mood amongst the revelers was that we shouldn’t still be here, on this patio or at this house. We should be at the lake, in the porch or on the pier, we should be there because we can be, and because we can be we shouldn’t be here. Not any longer than we have to be. Having seen the hay and the trees, and having consumed my pizzas, it was time to leave. No one said it until I said it this morning- we all left because we were bored.
There’s only so much that one can do while staring at a field. You can contemplate life. You can consider a career change. You can think about anything. But what you cannot be is entertained. Having left the farm and found the lake, we all went down for a swim. Kids splashed in the shallows while my brother and I argued how many feet it was from our parents’ pier to a pier that was far down the shore. He said a quarter mile, I said 800 feet. We sat on chairs and watched the boats pass. We watched sailboats change directions, the captain and his guests ducking their heads under the swinging boom. We watched boats cruising slowly and others screaming by, desperate to squeeze out the last drop of that beautiful Sunday afternoon. I supposed, as I sat there, that a nice second choice to this scenery is the quiet of a farmer’s field. But nothing, absolutely, entirely and thoroughly nothing, can beat the view from a lakefront chair.