Meadow!

What a difference a month and a half make! This is regular lawn grass, all grown up and producing seed. It's waist-height and the heat and weeks of no rain have turned it into a most lovely golden color. But a photo can't show the best thing about it: the way it moves in each gust of wind.



Meadow certainly isn't for everyone, but it does the job for me. Unruly flowers like bee-balm are going to be so much more at home sprawling in this space than they are in their current location, where they have to be weeded back to look like they fit.




Here's a photo looking the other way down the same path cutting through the side meadow. There seems to be a bit of confusion among gardeners concerning the dangers of ticks in home meadows. This meadow is the wild equivalent of a flower bed. It is not intended to be walked in, because Lyme's disease is no joke.



I'm on the lookout for more charismatic logs like this one to outline the meadow patches. The weed-whacker cleans up what the reel mower can't reach. Now that the grass is tall, my stick-and-log edges don't matter as much, but in the early season, they made the area look a lot more defined.



I used to hate mowing the back yard. Hot, dusty, stinky, and LOUD! Now I meditatively push my quiet reel mower in laps around the edges in the cool mornings or evenings, and sneak up on bunnies and snakes. There are dragonflies everywhere, and the fireflies have come out at night. I'm sure I'll be seeing more of the hummingbirds once the bee balm goes on a rampage. Our woodchuck has grown fat eating the yard, and I'm sure there are quite a few other critters enjoying the meadow that I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet.

Meadow, I see this as the start of a long and happy gardening relationship!