Plants are some of the most hopeful entities on the Earth. As much as I’ve had trouble with houseplants, outside they seem to do fine. Great, in fact. Long-time readers will know that I struggle with lawn care. It really didn’t enter my calculus of house buying—I was rather focused on the actual house, strangely. We ended up with more yard than we required. Thus, plants. I’m not a fan of paving over greenery, but there’s a small strip of land between the sidewalk and the street—technically a “verge”—that’s difficult to mow. Weed-eating it is also tricky because neighbors park their cars there practically 24/7 and some people don’t want a weed-eater that close to their showroom finish. A couple years back I hauled some paving stones from our backyard out to the verge. It decreased the grass by maybe 50 percent, but it still has to be whacked regularly.
I’ve been noticing over the summer into the fall that grass with a strong will to survive had begun growing roots over the top of the paving stones, intent on breaking them down. That’s what plants do. They work slowly, steadily, to achieve more room to grow. This is always amazing to me. Life is persistent. Many animals see a stone as an obstacle—something to be stepped on or over. Some plants see them as opportunities. Our human obsession with allowing only certain kinds of plants close to our habitations, and those trimmed just so, seems an exercise in futility. Of course, yard work isn’t my favorite activity, thus the paving stones in the first place.
After our species is done making a mess of the planet, plants will quietly take over again. Especially anyplace near where someone once planted ivy. We’ve got some very aggressive ivy in the back yard that I pull down year after year, and no matter how often I do it comes back with renewed vigor the next year. And crabgrass. That stuff won’t take no for an answer. I can tell some former owners were trying to do some landscaping with, well, landscaping fabric and decorative gravel. If you turn your back for a few weeks, the crabgrass gets in and its roots begin breaking the gravel down into soil. I wonder how there’s any exposed rock in the world, or maybe my yard is a paranormal plant paradise. I can imagine that without people here to “maintain” things, paradise (which is a garden) would return. Perhaps there’s a parable of hope among the plants.