this stinks

Up here in the mountains the few cherry trees on people’s properties are finally in bloom.  So is the serviceberry and balsamroot.  And the grass is coming up.

We have a patch of lawn here at the cottage the church provides for us–approximately 75 feet by 40 feet (I measured today).  The property is right next to the river.  Not only have I become more and more ‘organic’ in my view of how we treat and tend the environment we find ourselves in, I am even more aware of it now that we live right next to a water source and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking as to what it means to be a member of the watershed I live in (a sort of watershed examen, I guess).  The church is having the lawns and field on the church property sprayed this week (fertilized and sprayed for dandelions).  I asked the groundskeeper if we could prevent our lawn from being sprayed, and he said yes.  It was just hydroseeded last summer before we moved in, and as far as I know has never been treated with chemicals, so we’re starting with a good base.

I’ve spent the last couple week reading about organic lawn care (to be honest, my preference would be to actually remove the vast majority of the 75×40 ft. chunk of monocultured lawn grass, but, you know…).  So I guess one of the best things I can spray on the lawn is compost tea, which is the product of soaking a porous bag of compost in some water for a week, and all the good micro organisms and nutrients that leach into the water get sprayed onto the lawn, percolate into the soil and get it healthy and breaking things down and converting it to useable energy for the grass, etc.  But I can’t find a siphon attachment for our hose, and every place I go looking for one…no one knows what I’m talking about. 

So instead, today I went and bought 12 bags of steer manure at the hardware store.  I dumped 6 out over various areas of the lawn and raked it in.  It stunk.  And it didn’t go nearly as far as I thought (and really hoped) it would.  One bag is recommended for every 100 sq. feet…but it didn’t spread well at all.  I don’t know how many it will take.

Did I mention that I smell like crap?

I think the groundskeeper things I’m going overboard, but he’s a nice guy and he doesn’t say anything.  Just let me do my thing.

After I get the lawn covered in bull shite, my next project is to hang a clothesline.

And find a siphon attachment for the hose.

a journey to be more simple…I hope.

Well, we’re moved and settled into the new community.

We’re living in the church’s first parsonage, built in 1912 and affectionately referred to by many as “the Cottage.”  Evidently they didn’t need closets back then, as the house is compltely devoid of any.  Houses were MUCH smaller, too.  But we love it.  Just moving into it was an exercise in just flat out getting rid of stuff: furniture, clothes, trinkets, junk that we’d been holding onto and didn’t need.  But it took something like this to actually go through it all and get rid of a bunch of it, because we simply didn’t have the space for it.  It’s been a really nice step toward simplicity (how appropriate that I started reading Foster’s Freedom of Simplicity just as we started the moving process?).

I hope this continues to be a new path we take in regards to how we live, and how much we live with.  For a while now I’ve wanted to have a smaller footprint in regards to the amount of waste I create, how the surrounding environment is affected by our living structure, how much and what kind of energy I use, etc.  The Cottage is a good first step…hopefully the first of MANY I hope to take.  I want to live more simply and friendly, and I’m not sure if it’s easier or harder to do in a place like this (so far, it seems that many people who live this far out in the mountains tend to be of the ‘we need to fight and subdue nature’ mindset).  Last week I was mowing our lawn with a reel mower (which I’ve used and loved for three years now), and the church groundskeeper came by and said there was a tractor/mower in the garage that I could use.  I told him I preferred the reel and didn’t the little bit of extra time and effort it took to use it.  “Alright, if you actually enjoy it,” he said.  “But it’s there if you change your mind.”

I think I’d rather downsize my lawn (which we rarely use, anyway) before I upsized mowers.  Something that requires so much water and care and naturally goes into dormancy when it’s hot and dry out (which is when we ironically try to keep it the most alive)…is that really the best way creatively tend and order the creation?  I actually did some research this past summer on the history of grass lawns.  Evidently, they were initially a symbol of wealth and high social status.  At the time, most people didn’t own much land, and so the gardens they grew and harvested food from were often planted right outside their doors due to the small plots of land most people could afford.  As the wealthy acquired more land and the land was turned into an estate, lush grass lawns were put in place, and the subsistence gardens for the estate were planted at great distances from the house to communicate the wealth of the person and their ability to spread out.

I really started thinking about this, and I wondered if this is still at play in modern suburbia.  I mean, how much time do people spend manicuring their lawns?  Why is it so important for so many to be the ‘pride of the neighborhood’ with a green, lush lawn in front of their house?  When it came down to it, status and attention seemed to be the only real reasons I could come up with.  But what if we chose a different paradigm, once that took into account our specific locations and watersheds and environments?  What if we tried to create islands or bridges of habitat around our houses for populations of native wildlife?  No animals I’m aware of (including many insects and invertebrates) really thrive in a monocultured swath of manicured grass.  Short of playing tag and kicking a soccer ball and playing catch (which do have their place, don’t get me wrong), lawns aren’t really useful for much, and especially aren’t complimentary to the environment.  But what if we planted our lawns with various trees and shrubs, especially native ones that are well-suited for the native climate and didn’t require that much additional water (if any)?  What if we decided not to simply be encroachers on the birds and lilies….but neighbors?  What if we used water with native fish and salmon in mind (that require decent river flows in order to spawn and ‘produce more of their kind’)? 

This summer we had a clothesline.  I used to think those were for people who either didn’t know that dryers had been invented, or just couldn’t afford one.  But one day I decided to hang our laundry on the line (after reading an article in Better Homes and Gardens about how dryers don’t always get rid of viruses and germs and whatnot…but the UV and ozone from natural sunlight does).  I don’t know any other way to put it, but the practice of putting clothes out to dry just seemed…spiritual.  There was something almost worshipful about it, about the action of light through fabric and movement of sheets in the wind.

It seems this sort of life allows a greater awareness of the presense of God, and in the end, that’s my goal.  I desire an immense understanding of the weight of glory, an understanding that compels me to become an active and incarnational tool for God’s shalom, for the healing and restoration of His creation and our relationships to it and each other.  It’s such a huge thing, yet seems to hang its peg on something so simple as putting sheets on the line.