I’ve always loved moss. When I was very very young (five or six), we lived with my grandparents for a while--maybe a year? Maybe a few months? I don’t really remember very clearly.
My grandparents lived in a row house in Philadelphia. My grandmother, now in her 90s, still lives there. The house is tiny, and it has a correspondingly tiny patch of backyard, which my grandfather (who died in 1994) maintained very carefully. He had two little raised beds bordered with brick--one for flowers, and one for tomatoes; and his grass was green, free of weeds, and never more than two inches long.
The yard has a retaining wall, with a little hill that sloped up to another tiny patch of grass, so it’s almost like a two-story yard. It’s hard to describe. My grandfather planted shade trees in the upper yard. (We didn’t call it the upper yard; we called it “up the hill.”) He would cut the tiny bit of remaining grass on that level with a weed trimmer, because it was nearly impossible to get the mower up there. Eventually, with the shade, moss replaced the grass as ground cover up the hill.
That little patch of moss-covered outdoors was one of my favorite places. It was quiet and secluded and very shady and cool in the summer. To get to it, you had to climb the retaining wall (about three feet high) and then scale the ivy-covered hill, so adults almost never went up there, making it an ideal place to hang out. And it was mossy, making it even better.
My grandfather complained about the moss. He would have preferred a single-level backyard, with a wide expanse of golf course-quality grass. But I loved it. It was velvety soft and plush, and so much more green than the boring grass.
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Crazy Neighbor’s house is to our left if you’re looking at our house from the street. On HIS other side live the nice older couple who celebrated virtual Passover via Zoom.
This couple have lived next door to Crazy Neighbor for almost 50 years (he grew up in his house) and I think they’ve had enough. I’ve heard stories from other neighbors about long-standing tension between the families. We’re friendly with both households, making us something of an intermediary.
A few weeks ago, the lady of the non-crazy house (I will call her Mrs. NC) asked me why Crazy Neighbor never cuts his grass. It’s not true to say that he never cuts the grass but he doesn’t cut it as often as he should and he doesn’t cut it nearly as often as the non-crazy neighbors (whose property is immaculate) would prefer. I demurred, of course, and tried to divert her attention but Mrs. NC was fixed on the subject. She complained for a minute or so, and then she leaned across the six-foot social distance divide and said “Why don’t you talk to him? You can do that, right? He likes you. He doesn’t like us so much.”
Well, both of those two statements are true, but do I want to get further mixed up in the affairs of crazy neighbors? Is this some of my business? The answer to both of those questions is a resounding no. I smiled and laughed and said something noncommittal. Mrs. CN walked away convinced that I had the matter in hand, and I walked away having resolved to do absolutely nothing about Crazy Neighbor’s grass.
And do you know what happened? Crazy Neighbor cut his grass! THE VERY NEXT DAY he mowed down a field of grass as high as corn in August, grass that he hadn’t touched since last autumn. I haven’t seen Mrs. CN since we had this conversation, and I’m not sure how to play our next encounter. If I take credit for managing the Crazy Neighbor overgrowth situation then Mrs. CN will certainly expect me to continue to do so. In fact, she will assign me additional tasks. Crazy Neighbor has had a series of broken-down, semi-operational cars that remain on the street for weeks at a stretch before he gets rid of one and replaces it with another. I don’t want to be in charge of getting those ugly cars off the street. I don’t want to be the pest control point of contact. I don’t want to be the hole-in-the-wall monitor. Live and let live, right?
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So it’s cold and rainy again in the middle of what should be May, but that’s neither here nor there. It was beautiful last weekend, warm and sunny. On Sunday, I walked around my own backyard. I hadn’t done that in a long time. I mean, I sit out there (when it’s warmer than 50 degrees, that is; and when it’s not raining, that is) sometimes, but I seldom just walk around surveying the landscape and examining things. I’m not a gardener. I'm not in charge of maintenance. That’s why I got married.
Anyway, I walked around, looking at the grass and the flowers. We have a six-foot high wooden privacy fence that I don’t particularly like but that came with the house; and the neighbor’s azaleas are growing right through it, making it look like we have a wall of azaleas. It’s lovely, and we didn’t have to do anything--the azaleas just appeared. The azalea neighbors are the neighbors on the other side of my house, the right side as you face our house from the street; and the left as you face the back of our house from the backyard. I don’t know them very well. It’s just as well. I have all that I can do managing the neighbors whom I do know.
In addition to the azalea wall, we also have a few vole holes. As long as the voles remain in their holes and stay out of my house, they won’t have any trouble from me. As I mentioned earlier, live and let live is my policy, even for rodents. Unless, that is, the little motherfuckers cross my threshold. I hope they read my blog, because this is their only warning.
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But I saved the best part for last. That's right, we have some moss now! We planted a redbud tree in 2006, and it’s a lovely tallish shade tree now. We (by which I mean they, meaning my husband and sons) built a little brick-bordered circular bed around its base, where my husband will sometimes plant some annuals and then complain when the rabbits get to them; and the shady strip between the back fence and the circular bed is now covered with a nice even carpet of soft green moss. Maybe I’ll set up a chair back there. Maybe I’ll move my desk there. Maybe I’ll get my husband to build me a hill with a retaining wall at the bottom and a flat, shady patch of quiet at the top. The voles can probably make their way up a hill, but none of the neighbors will ever find me up there.
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