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resoluteToday has been a day of watering.
It hasn't rained in ages, and the shrubbery is starting to show signs of the lack. So after I watered everything in pots I put the sprinkler attachment on and started watering, well, a lot of stuff. Back of the Prairie Nook. Front of the Prairie Nook. Elderberries and raspberries. Cherry tree and elderberries. Three different locations in the vegetable garden. Out front, by the river birch. Now the hose is out front, by the pond. (Our pond is one we installed in 2002. It is two meters long and a little over one meter wide, and about 2/3 of a meter deep. We dug it out, put in a rubber pond liner, put fieldstone from our yard on all the edges, and planted prairie plants around it. It is still there, still providing water to all the wildlife.) When the timer goes I will have to decide if I can bear to keep wrangling it or if this is time to turn off the hose.
Since all of our landscape is native plants (like, 85-90%,) we mostly do not need to water anything except the vegetables and the stuff in pots. But the plants in the Prairie Nook are new, and need extra water, and, well, it hasn't rained in a while.
I was thinking about narrative while I watered, and weeded, and painted the garage side door AGAIN (eight coats of yellow paint and it still doesn't look quite bright enough, dammit.) I was thinking about how I have two broad categories in my head. Facts and Systems, and Narrative.
It is a fact that everything in nature competes. That some things live and some things die. That we have habitat for wildlife in our yard, and the wildlife is here in wonderful -- but a lot of that wildlife will die, and that's just part of the system that is nature. I worry that our terriers will catch and eat the resident rabbits, but I do not feel that this is a system that ... that I am at fault for? Sort of? I am responsible for putting in the habitat to protect wildlife, but I am not responsible for the fact that a female rabbit decided to move in despite the OBVIOUS and CONTINUOUS presence of a pack of predators. That's just, like, bad choices on her part. (The dogs have not caught any of the rabbits, since we keep calling the dogs in when it looks like they are on the hunt, and the rabbits are growing up and moving out, thank goodness.) Similarly, it's just part of, you know, life, that the rabbits kept eating the scarlet runner beans we planted. (We put cages around the plants and they are now growing unmolested.) I was mildly peeved because I want the plants to grow up those trellises, but it's not a crisis.
Shit happens, life goes on. Or it doesn't, and some other life moves in. Not my problem.
But narrative, narrative is different.
Each scarlet runner bean is a lifeship, a self-contained stasis pod of everything needed to re-create life. When planted in the right season, when watered correctly, when the dirt is warm and the sun is shining, each bean gives all the nutrients it has to create the first leaves that will provide power for the new plant. It struggles to get those leaves up and through the dirt, and when the sun hits those tiny, fragile things, they unfurl and transform electromagnetic radiation into stalk and stem, root and leaf.
The rabbits ate the leaves clean off. Just the tiny stalks remained.
We put protective cages around the plants. We watered, and hoped.
And now there are new leaves. They are smaller than the ones that were eaten. They are slightly irregular in shape. They show the signs of the traumatic injury to the plant. They are what the bean could manage, expending the very last resources of the lifeship in this heroic final effort. If this fails there is nothing left.
Narrative makes me sob my fucking eyes out, every damn time.
It hasn't rained in ages, and the shrubbery is starting to show signs of the lack. So after I watered everything in pots I put the sprinkler attachment on and started watering, well, a lot of stuff. Back of the Prairie Nook. Front of the Prairie Nook. Elderberries and raspberries. Cherry tree and elderberries. Three different locations in the vegetable garden. Out front, by the river birch. Now the hose is out front, by the pond. (Our pond is one we installed in 2002. It is two meters long and a little over one meter wide, and about 2/3 of a meter deep. We dug it out, put in a rubber pond liner, put fieldstone from our yard on all the edges, and planted prairie plants around it. It is still there, still providing water to all the wildlife.) When the timer goes I will have to decide if I can bear to keep wrangling it or if this is time to turn off the hose.
Since all of our landscape is native plants (like, 85-90%,) we mostly do not need to water anything except the vegetables and the stuff in pots. But the plants in the Prairie Nook are new, and need extra water, and, well, it hasn't rained in a while.
I was thinking about narrative while I watered, and weeded, and painted the garage side door AGAIN (eight coats of yellow paint and it still doesn't look quite bright enough, dammit.) I was thinking about how I have two broad categories in my head. Facts and Systems, and Narrative.
It is a fact that everything in nature competes. That some things live and some things die. That we have habitat for wildlife in our yard, and the wildlife is here in wonderful -- but a lot of that wildlife will die, and that's just part of the system that is nature. I worry that our terriers will catch and eat the resident rabbits, but I do not feel that this is a system that ... that I am at fault for? Sort of? I am responsible for putting in the habitat to protect wildlife, but I am not responsible for the fact that a female rabbit decided to move in despite the OBVIOUS and CONTINUOUS presence of a pack of predators. That's just, like, bad choices on her part. (The dogs have not caught any of the rabbits, since we keep calling the dogs in when it looks like they are on the hunt, and the rabbits are growing up and moving out, thank goodness.) Similarly, it's just part of, you know, life, that the rabbits kept eating the scarlet runner beans we planted. (We put cages around the plants and they are now growing unmolested.) I was mildly peeved because I want the plants to grow up those trellises, but it's not a crisis.
Shit happens, life goes on. Or it doesn't, and some other life moves in. Not my problem.
But narrative, narrative is different.
Each scarlet runner bean is a lifeship, a self-contained stasis pod of everything needed to re-create life. When planted in the right season, when watered correctly, when the dirt is warm and the sun is shining, each bean gives all the nutrients it has to create the first leaves that will provide power for the new plant. It struggles to get those leaves up and through the dirt, and when the sun hits those tiny, fragile things, they unfurl and transform electromagnetic radiation into stalk and stem, root and leaf.
The rabbits ate the leaves clean off. Just the tiny stalks remained.
We put protective cages around the plants. We watered, and hoped.
And now there are new leaves. They are smaller than the ones that were eaten. They are slightly irregular in shape. They show the signs of the traumatic injury to the plant. They are what the bean could manage, expending the very last resources of the lifeship in this heroic final effort. If this fails there is nothing left.
Narrative makes me sob my fucking eyes out, every damn time.
Thanks for sharing
Date: 2023-07-02 06:44 pm (UTC)This is an intriguing distinction, a transformative lens.