Asters and Goldenrod

The first gasp of Autumn is not color, but drying up.

September is the drying up time of year.

It’s not colorful and beautiful Autumn yet. It’s the part of Autumn where the trees start to look exhausted and dusty.

I desperately want to go for a hike out in the woods, to see the dusty trees before they change color. Hiking is how I breathe. It’s absolutely vital, and I’ve been without it for three months. At this rate, by Friday, we might have half of what we need for the down payment to replace the lemon car and get back to hiking, maybe less, maybe just enough. I try to tell myself that’s good progress when two weeks ago we had nothing.

I try not to think about what I’m missing. I went for a walk in my neighborhood, pretending I was hiking in nature.

It’s not so bad to walk in LaBelle, if you walk in the “bad part” past the derelicts and burned out shells, and tell yourself it’s a nature hike. The weeds in the abandoned yards are up to my waist and higher, blocking the sidewalk. A yard full of weeds is called a meadow. Meadows are beautiful.

The pokeweed is losing its leaves, leaving bright purple stems that aren’t unpleasant to look at. The Queen Anne’s Lace is peaked for the year, but there’s another white flower blossoming like mad in LaBelle. I don’t know what it’s called, only that it looks like chamomile but isn’t. Maybe it’s an aster. It’s the right shape. In with the asters are bright shocks of yellow which look like goldenrod but are really ragweed. I know that ragweed is a suffering for many, but I’m not allergic to it. I like it. I like to pretend it’s a flower. I also like to pretend the bindweed, a garden’s worst pest, is a Morning Glory. Asters and goldenrod, snaked all through with morning glories: that’s a beautiful meadow.

I know that this particular type of meadow, in the yards between rotting abandoned houses, is considered an eyesore and a noxious risk to the neighborhood. People throw their garbage into the meadows. Rats nest in them, and stray cats with fleas follow the rats. Ticks can hitch a ride on you if you walk through them. Poison ivy can lurk in there and make you miserable. Still, they’re so pretty to look at from a distance.

Mentally, I planned my perfect little utopia that I would build if I were rich enough. I would buy all of LaBelle, fix up the slum houses, and then sell them to their tenants in some kind of affordable rent-to-own plan. I would bulldoze the burned out shells and the abandoned wrecks that can’t be salvaged. Some of the pockets of vacant lot would become little parks, gardens and orchards. But I would also plant beautiful trees and native wildflowers in some, making micro-forests and micro-prairies. It would be beautiful.

I don’t have any money, so I just enjoyed the ragweed.

On the way home, I came across Jimmy’s boy and the Artful Dodger. They were treasure hunting in the alley: picking up trash to see if it was interesting and could be played with. You never know when a bit of broken bottle in a mud puddle could actually be a gem of seaglass.

I told them it might be time to harvest potatoes.

Oh, they were excited for the potatoes. “Where are they?”

“Under the soil! Under those dead plants. Potatoes are actually roots. Hold on, I’ll get a bowl.”

I ran in to get a bowl. By the time I came out, the boys were up to their elbows in the dirt. The Artful Dodger pulled out the first one: an oblong, ivory thing, smaller than a chicken egg. Jimmy’s boy squealed because it was much bigger than the failure of a crop last year.

The three of us dug together, sifting the soil through our fingers and throwing it on top of the compost. There were several tiny marble-sized potatoes. There were three or four rotten potatoes. And there were about six egg-sized potatoes for stew. I could have saved money and just bought several sacks from the supermarket for the cost of the potting soil I’d wasted growing my own potatoes.

“I don’t know why I bother to grow potatoes,” I said aloud, and then I realized why. It’s because children think it’s fun to dig through the dirt for a tiny nugget of food that would be cheaper at the grocery store. The boys dug as hard as they could, and then they poured out the great big half whiskey barrel onto the ground. They sifted through each handful, throwing it on the compost while I tended to the sunflowers. They stuffed their pockets with their share of the tiny crop and left some for me to cook.

“There’s a lot of good food this year,” said the Artful Dodger, appreciatively.

“If your ancestors who lived off of what they grew had had such a bad crop, they’d have starved,” I joked.

The boys weren’t going to starve. They had a good time and they learned that potatoes are roots. Learning and having a good time are both types of food for the human soul.

Jimmy’s boy picked a few more tomatoes for me before he left.

“Why do you always let little neighborhood kids play in the yard?” asked Adrienne.

“Because children are a sign that God exists.”

The garden is drying out for the year, dotted with dead grass and that flowering false chamomile.

Life is good.