The Garden

(CONTEXT: I grew up in a wonderful home in a very hilly/mountainous area of Alabama. Our yard was made up mostly of trees, monkey grass, and giant boulders - that I spent most of my childhood jumping & climbing on.)

There was a family tradition in my house when I was a kid. Every year my father would go through the springtime ritual of preparing the soil of our extremely shady (Shady may be an understatement - I don't think that the trees in the yard allowed any direct sunlight to reach the soil) yard for this year's grass crop. He would distribute the seed evenly across the yard, and even put out a smattering of hay so that the seed would not wash away. As I think back on it now... I have to laugh about the way that my father would chime out, "Don't cut across the grass" just as we were in the middle of the grass crop.... or the way we all would secretly jump our way through this forbidden zone (when my father was not looking)as if it was laden with landmines. We would all anxiously wait until eventually small green grass would come up and then we would have a beautifully green yard with a thick blanket of the best grass on the block..... My father would water the grass with great care and protect it's borders as if one was crossing the border into a new country. This always lasted until about August - when the heat of summer and our secret trips through the yard finally took its toll... and alas - the grass would die. Now my father is a very patient man... and to be honest with you i don't know how he was able to get any grass to grow in such adverse conditions... but I admire him for trying every year...

I think that I am going to be walking in his footsteps this summer. Our new front garden (Irish for yard) is going to be quite a challenge when it comes to growing my own grass crop. I have been out to survey it a dozen times this week, and I am a little doubtful that I am going to achieve the same results as my father. You see - the problem is that this is Ireland..... the land of rocks. Not really the fun jump on - climb on kind of rocks (although we do have a big one in the garden) but they are the billion little rocks that make the soil almost impossible to cultivate. So... inspired by my father's example I am going to start working on the yard.... I have learned by watching my neighbors (who are Irish) that the best way to prepare the soil is to pick up the bigish rocks, and start tilling the soil before you throw out seed... so.... it is going to take me forever - but I'm going to give it a go.

Before