pokey grass and palm trees

I am in Orlando, Florida tonight, and for the rest of the weekend. It is the first time that I have been here and I am not doing any of the normal touristy things. Oh no, I am selling Latin books to homeschoolers. But I am getting around the town a bit. Claire is one of our authors, and she came with me on this trip. She has a son and daughter in law and granddaughter here, so it is nice to know some locals to show us around. Florida feels like another world. On the one hand, the weather is absolutely lovely, so temperate and sunny and breezy. The palm trees and live-oaks are pretty, and there are some lovely gardens. On the other hand, though, this whole place looks like Disneyworld. Everything is big and overdone and has a gigantic parking lot.

I have been thinking a lot about land lately. I would like to own land. I would like to be a landowner, and take care of it. Flying on the plane down here, you can see farms and forests, and sprawling, windy suberbs, deep quarries, and construction sites with red clay soil exposed to the sun. You can see freeways that cut a straight line across the land for as far as you can see, and some places that looked so barren and un-naturally stripped that I don't know what they are doing there.

Here in Orlando, developing is happening everywhere. Around the convention sight there is a strange yellow soiled field, that has been dug up and will be turned into something that I suppose someone thinks is worthwhile. In the meantime, the Florida breeze is blowing it up into a sandstorm, and it looks like the Sahara desert. Other places being developed have been run over and so packed down by truck and bulldozers that it is hard to imagine that anything will grow there again.

I write about mowing my lawn a lot, and I recently have had several interesting discussions about lawns, and their benefits, and their drawbacks. When did we decide that lawns are the way to go? Is this still left over from England where grass actually looks nice and stays green? Here in Florida, the grass is thick and course. Our northern grass could never take the heat, but even this tough species gets sprinkeled every day (Florida has been in a drought for over a year now) along the roads and the on the hotel lawns. Where it isn't being watered, it is already dead and brown. Here at home, I chatted with some of my friends about dandelions in the yard. When did dandelions become the enemy? They only bloom for about two weeks and then are done for the summer. Why is a yard so much more desirable without them then with them? And when you think about it, lawns are an unnatural, very modern construction. They have become an entire industry. If we lived 100 years ago we would have to mow it with a scythe, or buy a sheep. There is no way that we would devote the acres and acres and acres of ground to this one, incredibly high maintenance construction. One of my friends also made the good point that lawns are hospitable to humans, and allow us to enjoy the outdoors in a way that we couldn't if we were always fighting through underbrush. This is true, but there must be a balance. Lawns may be hospitable to us, but they are not to any other creature on the entire planet. God didn't create the variety and complexity and the bounty of all species of flora and fauna for us to just look at grass around our shopping centers.

I have been wrestling with this anyway, but this trip to Orlando confirms and throws these thoughts into sharp relief. Claire's family that lives here think that they are living the American dream, but there is no way that I could live this way, in this place, in a drought, but with sprinkelers watering the grass that does not belong here, and with the ground being dug and cleared, chruned up and packed down to make way for a new organic grocery store. What are we thinking?

I so love my little garden. I am fascinated by it, watching each plant grow, and trying to imagine how it will look by the end of the summer. I hope that my being faithful with little will one day allow a chance to be faithful with more.

My mom has done this better than anyone else I know, and you should read her journey HERE. She works for the Manada Conservancy and her position is to persuade homeowners associations and developers to use native plants for their landscaping. Not only will they provide for our own particular Pennsylvania eco-system, and grow better than plants that are not suited for our climate, they will also remind us that we are home. Just like you don't see palm trees in PA, you don't see Winterberry's or Jack in the Pulpit or Mayapples here in Florida.
Can't wait to come home again...

And in case you have never seen it in person, this is my Mom's yard.

grandma and growing up

I have posted in the past about my Mom's mother. I love that side of the family and it is glamourous in a "mountains of Kentucky" way. My Dad's side of the family is closer to home. When I think about my cousins and aunts and uncles, I think first of them. My grandmother, my Dad's mother, my last grandparent, passed away last week after several weeks in the hospital. All through the weekend of the funeral I was too busy to really think about it, or even to think much about her. Then there was a flurry of activity with family coming in, some which we haven't seen in many years, and it was good to see them. My cousins and I compared noses, and decided who had the Mease nose or not. Most of us have it. We kept saying how much my Dad and his brothers remind us of our Grandpa. I got to see my oldest friend, my cousin Christy, and not only her, but for the first time her little, four month old daughter! How amazing. A normal life schedule should and does become completely thrown over and irrelevent in times like this. You always here that you don't know when the end will come, and that you can't plan your life, and life happens when we are making other plans and all that, and it sunk in this week.

My Grandma's funeral was on Monday, and my twenty-sixth birthday was on Tuesday. One of my friends pointed out that now I am in my late twenties, to which I gave a big sarcastic "Thanks!" But the combination of the two events is sobering, and thought provoking. I am an adult now. One way I know this is that the thing I want more than anything in the world is an outdoor clothesline. Another way I know this is on Tuesday night, my birthday, after Bible study, the thing that I wanted most of all was to go grocery shopping because I had just gotten paid, and there was no food in my cupboards. Zero. Nothing. Finally, there is the lawn. The big, thick, verdant lawn. Every week until October, I will be mowing it, and there is no managing or controlling it. I have written about mowing the lawn in the past, and not much has changed, except that I think there are more dandelions.

But all these pieces are fitting together in my mind. The lawn, the funeral, four month old Abigail, the clothesline in the sun, my birthday grocery shopping, the quilt that my grandmother's mother made that is now folded in my cedar chest. These feel like the most real things in my life. I want to take care of these things, and tend them like the sprouts in my garden. I want to make sure that what should be important stays important. I have allowed my life to get too busy and too cluttered, mainly with good things, but mainly because I have not wanted to let anyone down. I am not sure what I will be doing about this, as far as how these thoughts will play out in real life, but I will be thinking and praying about it. Maybe I am just coming off of a stressful time, and will be able to bounce back, and will need and want some action soon too. But right now I'd rather just be here at home.

But if there is anyone out there who is into lawn mowing... ;-)