Not sure whether I will have to mow it one more time, but since today is autumn equinox, I guess this afternoon’s buzz around the holler counts as the last official cut of Summer 2024. It had been a few weeks, maybe three?, since I had carried the weed eater to the raised beds garden, to the micropark, or to the unevennesses immediately behind the front shed. Hardest of the weed eating is at the micropark because it is mucky in places, extra uneven, and prone to kicking up mud if the machine’s angles are off by even 10 degrees for a tenth of a second. A muck misstep means ankle deep in glop. Easy to do, despite the handfuls and handfuls of rocks I have carried and planted so dutifully to bolster the creeksides. When weed eating, eye protection takes the brunt of the mud, although that brunt today included a cord-kicked hunk of dolomite from where the gravel road meets the grass; it deflected audibly clonk! from the left side of the eyewear. In moments like these I feel relief from the close call and congratulate myself for taking every precaution to buffer my eyes and ears from the worst of it.

Today’s weed eating stirred an underground hive adjacent to the first of the five tiger grass tufts, the one nearest to the stump that housed for the past few months a thriving pair of orange marigolds and sage. When I transplanted the sage in May I was worried for a couple of dry, hot weeks that it wouldn’t take, that the relocation shock combined with the harsh midday heat would prove too much to withstand, but then it showed me I was wrong and went on flourishing. Possibly it was the hardiest of any of the curated plants around the holler this summer, though the volunteer morning glories, which started on their own but later were sent spreading up a twine path (thus becoming curated, sort of), have a strong case. They are their own trophies, so congratulations one and all is the spirit. I don’t know what exactly were the stinging insects living it up in the underground hive. The few that scouted me as a threat-nonthreat were mild mannered, appearing to be fogged by the change of seasons and not so keen on having a serious and stinging chase-off. I was able to finish the trim around the tiger grasses after a few minutes and didn’t get stung even once, thankfully.

Three summers of this have taught me the subtler features of the chthonic many who burrow into the mud around this time of year. Can’t see their houses, but their doorways give away which is a snake, which is a frog, which is a turtle, and which is a crawdad. Neighborhood is sort of frog frog crawdad crawdad crawdad snake and then turtle, with snake and turtle being far fewer in number than the rest. The crawdad doorways are the littlest, and the turtles are the biggest, as far as I can tell. Banks are lined with various doorways this time of year, which makes me wonder whether they have subterranean encounters with one another, whether their soupy abodes abide a sharing ethic or a competing ethic. Maybe some of both. The water lettuce atop the pond has split and doubled half a dozen times. There isn’t any fruit to speak of but the stems are thick, almost thick enough to harvest for a cooking experiment except that the advice on water lettuce edibility is mixed. The creekside weed eating sends up strong perfumes, too, as the watercress and mint are abundant and hearty this time of year. I leave most of it alone; both plant types have recently bolted and late season pollinators do well to have a few more dabs at floral pollen. Careful as I am it is impossible to be surgical about the edges, and so there is an occasional spray of aromatic plant pulp. Or fungus. Thursday’s heavy downpour queued more mushrooms than I could count near the long-piled stack of wet wood in the micropark. There, too, I tend to leave well enough alone, as the edge of the woods there not far from where Bitumen, Fluffy Foot, and Cinnabon were killed at the end of June hugs a sharp embankment with quite a bit of poison ivy vining across it.

With the weed eating done, I switched to the Gravely for mowing the terraced paths, the upper holler and the strip above the ledge. The strip is just four widths of the mower, twice down and back, quick. All of the rider mowing took me maybe two hours, give or take. I carry short and long handled clippers and a handsaw on the mower because the edges are prone to thorny shoots, and so maybe ten or twelve times along the perimeter I stop the mower and clip the sharp appendage of a wineberry or whatever. If I left them to growing–and especially sunlight seeking–wherever they wanted, I would get slashed upon riding by. Maybe from the heavy rain the other day, but a lot of the megaweeds are tilting, buckling under their own late season weight, surrendering, giving back to the holler’s soil course. Several milkweed plants near the phone of the wind were giving over to gravity, but it’s late enough in the season that I didn’t have to maneuver around them all that much. Figure it’s fine to mow and mulch them. I do wish I had a better option for one of noxious plants I haven’t identified¹Stepped outside to get a photo and run it through the plant identifier app. It’s Spanish needles, aka beggarticks.. It is run amok along the unmowed banks. As its season ends, it shares with the world a small yellow flower followed by a starburst of seeds, which, by late fall will spring onto clothing and stick like velcro to anything it touches. Earlier in the summer I felt hope in thinking there weren’t too many of them returning, but now, today, I see there are hundreds. The solution, I think, is to avoid them. Hope they don’t burr up in Feta’s fur. They’re unmanageable otherwise. As I mowed, I kept thinking about ruderality, or those plants (and more?) that thrive in disturbance zones. I need to lookup the plant one of these days, but by numbers and by observable health, it is home here on this small corner of Appalachia, home here at the end of Rosemary Road.

Notes

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  Stepped outside to get a photo and run it through the plant identifier app. It’s Spanish needles, aka beggarticks.