Phew!

I spent part of the weekend trimming back the weeds from the house. I figured it wasn't safe to have such dry, yellow weeds so close to a log cabin... they would make perfect kindling if we were to have a bad fire season. In addition, I trimmed back and thinned out some of my perennial wild plants that were NOT a fire hazard, being still green and alive, just to tidy up a bit. I also tidied up the walkways that go among the cabin, the outhouse, the storage shed, and the firewood piles.

It seems the closer I live to nature, the more I seek to create some order and civilization to counter it. When I lived in the city (and by "the city", I include Fairbanks proper), I was comfortable with having a somewhat unmanaged American meadow garden in my yard. But now... I feel like I am craving some order, so I have become like other good American citizens and have begun keeping my wild brambles of raspberry canes and fireweed confined only to certain areas of the yard. It reminds me of a small incident in Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. One of our protagonists is a young widow who now finds herself living alone on her late husband's farm. She had been a city girl before marrying, but she loved nature in that detached way that city people do. She recalls having a minor argument with her late husband, over a honeysuckle vine. He had ripped it out like all other weeds, but she had been annoyed that he could destroy something beautiful. Would it have been so bad to let just the one weed live? Toward the end of the novel, she finds a barn that has been destroyed by honeysuckle vines, climbing all over it and rotting the wood. Kingsolver doesn't comment on it, but it was poignant to me. People like me love nature, but we have our lives to live, too, and sometimes those lives require that we not always be perfect tree-huggers. So in a weird way, I think it is my conversion to a rural life that has made me into a destroyer of weeds and tamer of raspberry canes. I must go visit Ann soon to see if she has any suggestions for native perennial ground cover that is not covered with thorns!

In other news, I neglected to visit the new local meat market this weekend. I had meant to, to give full reportage, but then realized that I'm not actually short of any meat products. But I feel I must give them a mention because I think it's a wonderful thing they are doing, enabling us locals to have a place to shop for local meat and produce. That way, those of us who don't hunt can still have access to non-factory-farmed meat. Yay!