… if you have a lawn and want something better than a lawn.

Seven years ago we had a typical front yard: a poor lawn, neglected shrubs, an unhealthy tree. We cut down the tree and over the years I've dug up the grass. I always wanted to remove it all. But digging into grass isn’t easy. It isn’t fun. Double-digging, a method to bury the grass in the same spot, hardly works in my experience. So the sod has to go somewhere. I fill a wheelbarrow and push it uphill to the backyard, into a bigger heap of sod. Over and over again. It takes a long time. A normal person would give up.

I'm going to skip the rant and the possibility of shaming anyone who has grass, like grass, enjoy mowing grass, etc. Removing your lawn will not save the world or reverse climate change. But it might feel like it. Last March I removed the last patch of lawn from my front yard and here's why I think you should too (this is mostly photos, so I broke it into two parts):

I saw a leaf-cutter bee in my yard last year and it was a big surprise and I mentioned it in an email. People asked, "Do they eat the leaves," and I thought, "I should really write about these bees if people think they eat the leaves." For some reason I didn't. Luckily, another leaf-cutter bee showed up one month later and told me there was no rush. "This happens every summer," it said. So finally, here's a blog post about last year’s highlight and what I’m most looking forward to in 2022: Bee Seen.

—André

[I sent this email yesterday but it ended up as spam for most subscribers. I figured out why and it should be stable now. If you did get it, just delete this one.]

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On Monday I was at my son’s school when a kid approached me with a riddle.

“Imagine you’re in a room with no doors and no windows. How do you escape?”

On Monday I was at my son’s school when a kid approached me with a riddle.

“Imagine you’re in a room with no doors and no windows. How do you escape?”

These type of jokey riddles from kids seem so solvable. But there’s never enough time because they’re looking right at you, dying to say the answer. Hold on…

And then she shouts, “Stop imagining things!”

Rain, sun breaks, it all feels fresh. The ground is wet, it's easy to move things around, plants settle quickly. The days shrink and may inspire pessimism—the inverse of March's day-expanding optimism—but if you work outside now, there will be more time next spring to observe.

Not that things have stopped growing. This November feels particularly spring-like, with tropical storms delivering drenched days and highs in the 50s. I wrote about this, from the perspective of one common flower doing one weird thing.

Blog post: Second Spring

Oh, and if you noticed that my last email was essentially a blog post and this one is a prompt to go to the blog itself… sorry? I’m just going where the wind takes me. Like this weird silk sack that dropped from a Douglas-fir during several days of intense wind and landed in our Halloween decorations. I have no idea what it is but there’s something inside—a meal? Bonus points if you can find the spider surveying the scene.

It’s been a while. My last email was in July and then I entered a summer daze. I’ve never been so uninspired. It had something do with a 51-day stretch of no rain. Something to do with watching native plants reach breaking points. Something to do with getting stopped by a firefighter in the middle of an overpass as a brush fire kicked up along I-5 and covered my path with smoke. A real front-row seat to a desperate future.

The summer wasn’t just dry, it was scary dry. Had there not been a heavy 72-hour storm in September, the week before fall began, it would’ve been the driest summer since 1945. I often felt lost standing in my yard, catching glimpses of summers to come. Facts that we have to face.

I suspect it wasn’t just the heat that had me in a daze. August was the last month before full-time in-person school started again. After 18 months of working from home with a kindergartner turned first-grader, I kind of gave up. Writing about a hobby—which is a hobby all on its own—is hard enough. Doing that while freelancing and keeping a kid on schedule leads to something impossible.

One week into July and I’m already thinking about where to move things. Are you? Lots of plants have already done all they’re gonna do—except set seed—while others are approaching max size and about to bloom. If you too are making mental notes about what to change for next year, write them all down. Winter You will thank Summer You.

“We garden for tomorrow, and thereafter. […] Gardening, you are no longer stuck in the here and now; you think backward, and forward, you think of how this or that performed last year, you work out your hopes and plans for the next.”

How the garden is perceived by writers and painters is the topic of Penelope Lively’s first essay, "Reality and Metaphor," in her 2017 book, Life in the Garden. It was recently recommended by a friend (Hi, John), and so far I like Lively's concise style—this isn't a meandering garden memoir.

You heard—it was hot. The heatwave strained the yard but coincided with the first bloom of a young tree poppy. Being outside was overwhelming, but the plant lured me out throughout the days. Here is my reaction to those 100-degree moments…

Post: Sunny Side Up

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Hey outsiders,

There’s a new post on the blog and a plant profile to go with it. If you’re familiar with companion planting, you’ll like this one. If that term doesn’t mean anything to you, soon it will, in an unusual way.

Blog: Companion Planting With a Twist
Plants: Lacy Phacelia

And here's something I didn't expect to see on Saturday:

Hey, this is André. I wanted to tell you about a new website I made — it’s called Useful Yard.

You’re getting this because you subscribed to my old blog or gave me permission. But if you’re no longer interested, just unsubscribe. If you stay, the emails are private and I won’t know if you open them or click a link.

So, what’s a useful yard?