Faith in the Seeds

For we walk by faith, not by sight.

-- 2 Corinthians 5:7

Maintaining the wildflower meadow in my backyard is always an adventure. It develops differently every year, and five years in, I've learned to set expectations for it aside and and watch for what changes come.

I don't think I've ever seen as much change from one season to the next as I have this year. One reason is obvious. I announced in a post last month that I would momentarily begin the annual burn, but when I was getting ready, I found our outdoor spigot running dry. I couldn't get a drop out of it and couldn't diagnose the reason(that would require a plumber later in the week). No hose, no burn. Another maintenance recommendation is to cut the meadow. So I took my hedge sheers to the meadow--as I usually do before a burn--chopped down the standing dead stalks, and let them fall where they would. Thus began an experiment.

One change from previous years I think I can attribute to not burning is that plants have been slower to emerge and develop. By exposing the soil burning allows more sunlight to reach the ground, warming it and prodding plants to sprout or resprout. This year, the ground is covered by the remains of last year's growth, meaning less sun getting to the soil and more obstacles for emerging plants. Plants in the wild fare well enough with these conditions, so I'm not worried.

I have been pleased to see some plants spreading that had not previously. Through last year, my foxgloves yielded only one or two offspring. This year, there must be a dozen or more new ones out. Big leaf and heart shaped asters have moved to ever corner of the garden from a few spots in the sunny center. New trilliums and columbines are sprouting. On the other hand, I'm seeing less fleabane, geum, and black eyed susans. In different years, one or another of these was so abundant I considered culling some. It seems like different plants rise to prominence each year, then step out the spotlight the next.

I'm less happy about the most vigorous species species in the meadow. Creeping charlie and chickweed have plagued the meadow since year 2. I've weeded agressively, especially in years 2 and 3, but they have become more entrenched. Fires do hold them back somewhat, but I didn't burn this year and they are thicker than ever. They form mats across most of the meadow, over a foot thick in some places. I've been reluctant to weed this year since, as my plant source told me last year, tromping around and uprooting plants gives weeds more opporunties to seed. The "good stuff" (in spite of some of it spreading) is thinner than usual this year. Were my native flowers and grasses being snuffed out?

Yesterday I finally took a walk out there to look at matters up close. I didn't uproot any weeds, but I did gather handfulls of charley and chickweed vines. I only had to run my hand across the tops of them to pull out skeins a yard long. As I thinned the mats, I glimpsed young native plants growing underneath--in good shape, if smaller than I would expect at this time of year. Mostly Bergamot, asters, fleabane, and bottlebrush grass. My plants weren't vanquished but simply obscured. Where I saw them, I cleared away enough of the weedy thatch above to give their leaves direct light. Good work, I thought, but as I walked, I could see still more young plants in the trampled weeds marking my path. Some were broken or crushed down into the soil. While I wanted to stay and continue thinning the weeds, doing so risked harming more plants than I could save.

I shouldered the bag I'd been filling with weeds and left the meadow. This was an act of faith. Faith that, as the experts tell me, the natives will eventually push out the interlopers. That those hidden seedlings would eventually push above their weedy canopy. That what they could do on their own, with the assistance only of sunlight and rain, was more than what I could do for them.

I'm not sure this is what Thoreau was talking about when he titled a late book Faith in a Seed. But those words suggest something that, at this moment, seems entirely reasonable.