Matching Tracksuits

They just about destroyed one of our Leyland Cypresses last year: Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis, Evergreen Bagworms. They devour the needles of the tree, using some of them to camouflage their cocoon and the rest for nourishment. The females — who have no wings, legs, or eyes — remain in their bags their entire lives, and as they never lay their eggs, the new larva emerge from the mother’s carcass.

It’s a lovely little insect, in other words, one that we all love and long for. We just happen to have more than our share of them, and since no neighbors appreciate the sheer destructive capability of such a pet, we simply have to pick them off, one by one, and euthanize them.

It’s really an itch-inducing process that I don’t enjoy, but occasionally it yields a nice surprise or two.

What’s ironic is that we have at least three bird nests in those three, neighboring trees, and one would assume that having birds around would reduce the population of something like caterpillar larvae. Apparently, the camouflage is quite effective.

However, we have yet another tool at our disposal. We are breaking all conventions of warfare and going biological: Bacillus thuringiensis.

“Go out the front down and look to the left,” K instructed one morning.

In order to create, we must destroy.

Partial destruction is oxymoronic: in the process of destroying, we often find we need to destroy more than we’d initially anticipated.

One cannot destroy only halfway, though one can create halfway. It’s called cutting corners.

Living in a house highlights that mystery, for a house is itself a mystery.

There are leaks that leave tracks, and sinks that have no visible connection to the main drain line.

“When you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out. In.” You know, it’s going to be alright. Eventually.

With new grass everywhere — “baby grass” as L calls it — we do a lot of watering these days.

It’s enough to make me think we should have installed an irrigation system.

But then we wouldn’t get sights like these.

Last year, we overseeded our front yard. It looked fantastic.

“We have the best grass on the block!” K and I would congratulate each other. It was thick, lushly dark, and totally carpeted our entire front yard.

Over this summer, it all died.

All of it.

We looked at our wretched front yard and looked at what it used to be like, and a sort of “why do we even try?” depression would set in.

But we don’t give up. Not we. We continue to dump money into projects that probably should be left alone. So last week, we rented semi-heavy machinery,

and started all over.

Technically, it was called “dethatching.” Practically, it was called “pulling up all the grass, most of which had long-since died.”

We were left with rows of rubbish — weeds, dead grass, almost-dead grass — that had died for mysterious reasons. Bugs? Disease? (Certainly not fungus: it was too dry this summer for any fungus to survive more than a few moments.)

Whatever it was, we didn’t want it. So ten bags of it went out to the curb.

What a waste, really. It got me thinking — if our lawn survives this coming summer — whether or not I could simply run our mulching mower over the dethatched refuse and let the yard self-feed.

After applying top soil, mulch, seed, fertilizer, and straw, the rain came. After many dry weeks, we had thirty-six hours of continual rain, followed by sporadic showers through the following week.

I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d tried.

A week later:

We still have pictures a hang, a television to buy, and a few final touches, but the living room, by and large, is done.

Another Saturday completed: we repainted the living room in preparation for a complete redecoration.

First and second coats and we’re pretty much done. I admit I’ll miss the yellow.

K felt it was too bright; I loved the way it made the room open.

Between coats, I mowed and raked some leaves. It was not warm enough to break a sweat, and so it almost didn’t even feel like work. But by most definitions, it was.

In another life, twenty-five to thirty years ago, my Saturdays were supposed to be days of reverence and quiet rest. Saturday is, of course, the seventh day; Jews and a few groups of Christians believe it is the sabbath, a time of rest. There’s something appealing about that to me, even today.

Still, in the intervening years, my associations with and expectations of a good Saturday have literally turned 180 degrees. Just as I couldn’t imagine mowing then, I can’t imagine not spending Saturdays working now.

It makes me wonder what else might flip-flop in my life, and what else has changed without me yet truly noticing.

Four Saturdays of work. A couple of pros would have the backs and arms to get it all done in one day. We took somewhat longer.

Part of it was inexperience. Having never dug up and recreated a planter, we had no idea how long it would take; we certainly didn’t know how much effort it would require.

Although the vision was very amorphous, we somehow knew what it would look like, though.

Now, instead of five boxwoods we have:

• two Loropetalum chinense,
• two Gardenia brighamii,
• three Rhaphiolepis indica,
• three Rhynchospermum jasminoides,
• a line of alternating Tradescantia pallida and Senecio cineraria,
• a small patch of Viola tricolor hortensis.

Who am I kidding? I can barely remember the plants’ common names, let alone the Latin.

Though not in in Blackburn, Lancashire. Rather, they’re in our yard, now.

Weeding, aeration, leveling, seeding, fertilizing — it’s been a long day.