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A broad, rich green lawn may be a fine thing, but to have a meadow for a lawn is even finer. A meadow-lawn needs mowing only once a year, requires no rolling, no watering, no feeding, and you can be gaily unconcerned about moles, slugs, and crabgrass that may turn up in it.
Only a narrow strip of mowed green grass surrounds our house. The rest of the “lawn” is all meadow-sunny meadow. Parts are high and dry, parts are low and boggy. A stone wall stretches along one boundary-a wall where maples, ironwood, laurel, elm and wild cherry grow. Nearly 200 kinds of wild flowers thrive through the seasons in the meadow. Many were there when we moved; some we have added. Other new ones have simply appeared. In the nine years of our occupancy the flowers have doubled in quantity and quality-largely, I suspect, because we have delayed the annual mowing of the meadow from June till late August which gives the plants a chance to reseed and multiply. And what a wealth of material is here for indoor bouquets.
When you begin dealing with wild plants, just about anything can happen, most of it good, and much of it a surprise. Down in the meadow, I often find some new flower I have never seen before. Rushing to one of my books on wild-flower identification, I soon make the acquaintance of the meadow’s new inhabitant.
No Two Years Alike
Another interesting aspect of meadows-we never know what will be the feature of the season. One year the wild geraniums may be abundant and wonderful, the next they will be present but not predominant, while the white-flowered pentstemons steal the show.
And then there are the birds, butterflies, wonderful insects- the wildlife generally. You speculate on just where a certain small sparrow is nesting as he flies in and out of some tall grass, apparently feeding a family. You make careful note of his location, studying it and him from the terrace with binoculars. But when you go to investigate you find nothing-no nest. And as you give up, a bluebird hovers gracefully in midair, catching insects, a humming-bird flits among the wild spice pinks, a pair of dragonflies drifts by doing an aerial dance and, in the sunlight, butterflies hover constantly above the butterfly bush. Indeed, the whole field is host to butterflies-large brown monarchs, huge black-and-yellow swallowtails. And the most fascinating kinds of bugs crawl up and down the grasses-especially one magnificent little blue-green creature with touches of shocking pink. It suggests an Egyptian scarab and we find it is called the red-banded leafhopper.
At times, usually early spring or late fall, we are visited by some handsome crows that wander in the boggy area, black and shiny. Now and again we have a deer grazing, or just looking about in wonder-a doe and two fauns last week. Our salt lick is always a cordial invitation. One year a neighbor asked if her brother could tether his cow in the meadow. We loved having a contented cow ever in our vista, moving slowly and chewing her cud (and, of course, the fertilizing aspect was splendid).
Mow Hay Annually
The only upkeep our kind of “lawn” requires is once-a-year mowing in mid-August. Jo Gjuresko arrives with his fine red tractor-mower machine. All morning the hum of the motor permeates the house. It is so stirring that I can settle to nothing. From window to window I watch the meadow go through its annual metamorphosis. Now it no longer waves in the breeze but lies flat, row on row, neat and clean and just as beautiful as before. We usually plan a party for the evening after it is cut to share its new fragrance.
We have such a lovely feeling of irresponsibility about the meadow. In the garden where things also grow with abandon, it is necessary to make decisions about space allotments for each cultivated plant. But in the meadow we let the clover,
black-eyed susans, prunella and all the others argue rights of possession. It simply isn’t our business.
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