I've always felt like a bit of a fraud when teaching Romantic nature poetry, because Nature and I do not have what I would call a cordial relationship. Owning a house means taking care of the garden and lawn, of course, but my mother is responsible for more of the current garden than I am. It's not like I want to pave Nature over, or anything, but Spring's arrival always triggers a raft of puzzling discoveries:
1. Are you there, lawn? It's me, Miriam. My house's previous occupant worked for the park service, and he had a thing for trees. What he didn't have a thing for, it seems, was landscaping. Ergo, my front and back yard are clotted with Random Trees, which in turn interfere with that one thing necessary for the lawn--namely, sun. Needless to say, I don't have shade-friendly grass--in fact, in several spots I have no grass, period--and my occasional gardener (by which I mean the one who does this for a living, not Mom the Retired School Administrator) feels skeptical about reseeding under the current landscape conditions. But I can't axe the rare American Chestnuts, and the other trees are so large that I can afford to remove them only one at a time. To make matters worse, while mowing my weeds lawn a couple of days ago, I discovered Mysterious Ground Cover, which is currently in the process of, ah, covering the ground. (I'm having the much-sunnier front yard reseeded sometime this summer, though.)
2. Tiptoe through the tulips. Last year, I had leaves, but no tulips. This year, many tulips. I see that there was also some tulip-related Gardening by Squirrel, although not bizarrely so--e.g., no tulips growing out of the middle of my lawn.
3. Death comes for the azaleas. Going into last winter, I had five living azaleas; now I have one. "But, officer, I didn't do anything different!" I cried. Then again, I haven't done in the rhubarb (which I could live without, honestly--I always let one of my neighbors abscond with it), and the holly bushes I planted last summer are, amazingly enough, looking pretty cheerful. I probably can't take credit for the survival of the hostas, given that, as a friend of mine pointed out, killing hostas is more of a problem than keeping them alive.
4. Blowing a raspberry. I've tried to eradicate a badly-located raspberry bush twice now, and the darn thing keeps coming back. In fact, not only is the bush practically a phoenix, it has mysteriously spread to the back property line, possibly as a result of Gardening by Squirrel, Bird, or Rabbit.
5. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Ground Cover. When the front yard was regraded a few years ago, the new topsoil apparently contained the seeds of some Mysterious Ground Cover (not, incidentally, related to the Mysterious Ground Cover currently threatening my back yard). This MGC appears to be completely invincible. Pulling it doesn't work. Digging it up doesn't work. Brush killer doesn't work. With my luck, it's going to demand to have a go at me one of these days.