 © Paul Brown
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What to Do with a Lawn? Click to read Click to |
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© Paul Brown
|
What to Do with a Lawn? Click to read Click to |
What to Do
with a Lawn?
Weston, Massachusetts. Town dump, 1975.
My dad and I hurl trash bags over the ledge. I get a pleasant, dizzy sensation watching
the bags spin all the way to the ground. I consider jumping over the cliff and landing in
the soft mass of plastic bags and lawn clippings below. We are a family of four and we
produce a lot of junk. Paper plates at every meal. "It saves dishes," explains
my mother. When we go to McDonald’s, my parents grab twenty napkins and fifteen
ketchups. "Make it twenty-five napkins," my father jokes to my mother,
"These kids are messy."
My dad looks forward to our Saturday dump trips. It’s partly a break from my babbling mother and partly the beauty of our dump. Hundreds of seagulls chose this place as their home. How could they be wrong? I launch the last bag and wait to see it hit bottom. We slap the dirt off our hands and leave like bandits. A cloud of dust follows our car. The next Saturday morning project is mowing the lawn. Unlike going to the dump, mowing the lawn is something my father hates.
Woods Hole, Massachusetts. New Alchemy Institute, 1981.
It’s a field trip, so everyone is giggling and poking each other. Our science
teacher, Mr. Jordan, is undaunted by our antics and leads us into a geodesic dome. He
describes how the plants, the sunlight, and the fish pond interact in a perfectly
balanced, symbiotic system. We don’t remember exactly what he says, but my friend
Helen and I vow to return here someday for an internship. New Alchemy is a vision of the
future. No trash is produced and all the food comes directly from gardens and greenhouses.
Outside, in the main garden, vegetables and flowers are thriving on rich soil. Helen flicks a fava bean at me. It’s bigger than any bean I’ve ever seen. I threaten her with a cherry tomato. We’re supposed to be listening. "Helen and Krista," Mr. Jordan says firmly. He thinks we’re a lost cause.
Elsah, Illinois. Principia College cafeteria, 1987.
Students line up for lunch as we try to pull them aside and hand them flyers. "Save
Our Soil!" we chant. The twelve of us have gathered under a giant banner that reads:
SOS. Some people don’t want to hear about topsoil or earthworms before lunch. Others
gather around.
"The college is handling their land in a way that’s illegal, immoral, and makes no financial sense," I tell them. "The soil is eroding at an incredible thirty-three tons per acre per year. They are farming 360 acres of their land as if there were no tomorrow. They’ve got a local farmer who plows the fields every year and plants a monoculture of either soybeans or corn. We want the administration to change the way they are farming or convert the farmed acres into native prairie grass. We’re asking you to join us in skipping lunch today. Help us raise awareness about how soil erosion affects people around the world."
"How does it affect them?" a student in a tennis skirt asks me.
"It starves them."
Cottage Grove, Oregon. Aprovecho Institute, 1988.
We sit on tree stumps and eat stew. We are people from large and small countries all over
the world. Each of us has a different project under way. Aprovecho means "I
make the best use of" in Spanish. Behind me is an earthen cookstove, developed by
Ianto, one of the founders of this place. Its design and materials are simple, chosen
especially with third world conditions in mind. Anyone anywhere can build this stove.
The stew is difficult. Craig, today’s cook, does not believe in cutting vegetables. "It tears their souls." He looks Neanderthal as an entire onion hangs from his mouth. "What about chewing? Doesn’t that tear their souls anyway?" Craig doesn’t answer me. I’ve already wearied him with questions during this morning’s gardening. I finish my stew and dip into the steaming side dish of fava beans. The beans, and everything else we eat, have come from the garden.
Brookline, Massachusetts. Efficiency apartment, 1989.
I’m already married at twenty years old. Our first apartment is the size of some
people’s closets. We are in love and space isn’t an issue. Harry makes breakfast
for me. I bite into a piece of toast and then stop eating it abruptly.
"Harry," I ask. "Did you make this in the mouse toaster?" He beams with delight. On trash day, Harry found this toaster on the curb, and it had a dead mouse in it. He cleaned the toaster thoroughly, he insists, with bleach and a toothbrush. Besides, it’s a curvaceous, chrome toaster, too much of a classic to let slip away.
"It’s recycling," Harry defends.
"We’ve stooped to a new low," I say. I finish my toast.
Portland, Oregon. Our new house, 1995.
Our house sits on a half-acre lot. Harry and I hate mowing the lawn. The permaculture
group straggles in and puts homegrown potluck dishes on our kitchen table. I look forward
to their salads, which are topped with dandelions and other edible flowers. Harry
distributes a map of our yard. I greet people at the door. The group is fondly known as
p-pig, Portland Permaculture Implementation Group. Appropriate to our acronym, these are
people who are not slaves of hygiene. Deodorant is a dirty word.
At our design party, people hover over a white board and map out our yard. We discuss wind direction, slope, rainfall, and native plants. We decide to make a corner of the front yard into a flood plain, just as an experiment. We’ll absorb the runoff from the road and water some bushes and dwarf bamboo with it.
Half of the group goes to the back garden and prepares the soil for planting fava beans. I hand out gloves and shovels to the outdoor crew. Seth Greenley, a permaculture instructor, comes to the backyard bearing gifts: Five barrels of wood shavings for making walkways in the garden. A bucket of rich compost, complete with earthworms and the ashes of a dead friend of his. And a couple of branches of Oregon grape. "Just stick these in the soil," he says. "They will grow."
In a few years, fruit trees, vegetables, herbs, chickens, and maybe a goat will fill up the yard. We will mulch and plant, a gradual process, and the lawn will lose ground, piece by piece, until it is gone. Anyone who comes over to play croquet will be sorely disappointed.
Profile
Krista and I had nothing in common in 1990. I noted this quickly as we fled into our first feminist literature class. Where I had bright pink fingernails, Krista had natural, tennis-playing hands. Where I had tightly permed and coifed hair, hers was short and without pretense. And where I’d painstakingly applied various shades of pink and brown to my face, Krista’s remained defiantly plain. (I remember keeping my pink nails curled tightly into my palms so Krista wouldn’t notice them during class discussions.) My conservative, Republican upbringing was to receive its first and fatal blow in this class. Worse yet, I was convinced I was the only person in the group who didn’t study Gandhi and listen to alternative music. My studied success in polite society marked me for social failure among this group of my peers. And Krista comprised my imagined judge.
By a peculiar turn of events, I now live with Krista, our husbands, three cats, and a vegetable garden in Portland, Oregon. Firm in her conviction that the number of cars on the road should be decreased, Krista rides her bike in all kinds of weather, rain or rain. She works in a group home for developmentally disabled adults and writes plays in her off time. She also teaches basic writing and English as a second language in local community colleges, tutors a Vietnamese family in English, and attends the regular meetings of the wbs (Who Brought Something) Writers Group which she founded a couple of years ago. Her interests include permaculture, organic gardening, and energy-efficient living.
—Julie Finnin Day
Bio
Krista Koontz
Place of residence: Portland, Oregon.
Grew up in: Massachusetts.
Day job: Social work.
Education: B.A., Principia College, Elsah, Illinois. M.A. in English, University of
Rhode Island.
Dramatic productions: Don’t Be a Stranger—produced at the Rexall
Rose Idiot Room Theater, Portland (April 1996).
Serial publication: The Oregonian.
Current projects: Building a straw-bale house for Julie and Ryan in our backyard.
Swiss chard, blue potatoes, purple cabbage, Walla Walla onions, mustard, bok choy,
tomatoes, strawberries, kale, chives, lettuce, peas, green beans, and fava beans.
Favorite book: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
Belief: Christian Science.
Craving: Lobster, but I’m a vegetarian.
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