I’m too far away from nature these days and perhaps that is why I’m feeling so unbelievably off. I’ve reached a point where my kids’ voices sound like noise. I don’t hear them. I haven’t felt like myself today, yesterday or the day before. I started crying in my boss’s office yesterday over something that I could normally figure out on my own.
I used to spend at least an hour a day working on and establishing our permaculture garden. Our front yard used to be all weeds. The sun had scorched all of the grass away, making a perfect home for tall weeds to grow which my husband and I would pull out by hand every day. I’ll reiterate that we were visible from the street during this process and received many comments from neighbors about using weed killer instead.
After a while we looked around at all the other yards and realized that we didn’t want to fix this problem by seeding more non-native grass that would just die down again and leave us permanently weeding. During this time I read a statistic that half of all water usage in the United States goes to watering the lawn to keep it green and better than your neighbor’s. That is truly insane. We simply are not those people.
And, without knowing it, we embarked on a year and a half long journey to kill our lawn and establish a permaculture yard with local, native plants that don’t need daily watering because they can survive just fine in the area where we live. They are from here.
Through trial and error and a failed solarization attempt, we eventually covered the entire front lawn with cardboard leftover from people who had recently moved to the area and were all too happy for us to swing by and take their boxes away. We layered the cardboard over the weeds and topped it with compost to smother what was below. We learned that this process is called sheet mulching. It took us forever, but I was happier when I was outside digging and getting my hands dirty every day. I think a little part inside of me withers when I’m stuck inside.
Now when I look outside my front window while I’m working I see bees buzzing around the catmint, I notice butterflies flying in the breeze, I see the changing colors of the flowers and even saw a snake one day slithering around by the new rock path. It makes me so much happier than looking at a lifeless lawn.
But now that it is established, the yard doesn’t need my constant tending. And, believe me, that’s what we wanted, but I don’t have an excuse to go outside because there are no more weeds to pull.
I truly am overworked and exhausted at the moment. Both of those things are true, but I’m wondering if I can come back to center a bit by having that dedicated outside time like I used to. I’ll try that today and see if it helps me return to….me.