The Rivanna Rambler

This show originally aired on February 28, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net.

 

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February 28, 2007

I am a reluctant gardener. The seasons conspire against me here in Central Virginia. In the winter, when I should be planning the vegetable garden, pruning shrubs, and tidying the lawn, I crave the quiet of indoors where I hibernate, in between bursts of outdoor activities that take me into the woods or by the river or to the tops of the ridges. Much the same happens to me in the springtime rush, a time of not enough time – when I am called by the waters to paddle rivers bursting with green while the weather is still tolerable. For sure, when spring emerges, I do spend a few days tethered to lawn and plants – affirming my environmental responsibility to this City acre and my good fortune for having land at all. Summer, when vegetables want thinning and harvesting and weeds go to seed, I’m retreating to any place removed from heaviness of the humidity. By the time fall rolls around, I vainly try to make up for lost time, tidying and raking in anticipation of the winter.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I have not yet done anything about the invasive plants in my yard that I boldly named a couple of summer s ago on this show: the English ivy and bamboo I inherited when we bought our home, and the others that I actually planted before becoming enlightened to the issue of natives versus non-natives. My yard boasts not one, but two, firebushes, that I planted, now over seven feet tall, their little green buds forming round and ready for spring as I speak. And the large and small leafed privet – whose fragrant blossoms provide a welcome olfactory memory of summers on Cape Cod – well, we actually planted more to balance the ones already there. Folly, I now see, as sprigs emerge uninvited amidst the quince and holly.

I’m resigned to periodically pulling the ivy from its ascent up tree trunks and pulling the privet from where it is not wanted. I will, with time, find replacements for the butterfly bush — also not a native to our region. And, I will continue to cope with bamboo roots running underground webs across the upper lawn. But what is really troubling me this season is that I now realize that the sediment that smothers the life our of river and its tributaries comes not just from fields, or pastures, or construction sites – it also comes from city lots like mine, where the lawn has become patchy, or the piles of sand and mulch from an old garden project lie open to spring downpours, or the border of the driveway reveals a gash of red Virginia clay ready to become runoff.

There is the slope of land between at the front of our house lawn and street, where I spent our first years of living here painstakingly removing the English Ivy and the poison ivy, to give room to periwinkle, whose sweet blue flowers and lush evergreen seemed to tidy our yard and match our cottage home. But I now know that this, too, is a non-native – an imported ornamental that is hearty precisely because it has found in our climate optimum weather and minimum ecological constraints. The irony is that, while the poison ivy would not have been easy to live with, its white berries are food for many species of birds – one of the best reasons for choosing native over non-native plants.

So my quandary is this … I want to replace the vinca with a native groundcover, but I know that doing so will expose a slope of soil that is rich and poised to wash right into the storm drains on its way to the river – and to prevent this will require from me careful planning, silt fencing that I must tend with vigilance, and a healthy crop of good luck and good timing between seasonal rains. I wonder if my commitment to environmental stewardship will sustain me through the effort of transforming my yard. In the days before spring, the best I can do is pay attention to the questions – and hope, to paraphrase the German poet, Rilke, that I will live into the answers.