I spent a good deal of time this memorial day weekend working in the front yard. I had some help one day from my sister in-law and cousin and that made the work speed by as we shared stories not worth repeating, but no less meaningful(not to mention funny!). [For some really good writing on the subject of (repeatable) stories, check out this posting by our friend Chad working in Chattanooga on a farm.] I tried to share my thoughts praising manual labor, I think maybe a little bit got through, but they peeled off after a while to play cornhole. Can anyone blame them! Our pile of weeds mounded up tangled with a green plastic mesh that must have been put down under the sod when it was laid decades back. I continue to work through my difficult feelings on labor, suburbia, living, and the environment.

The mulch is coming this friday. 12 yards of it are going to be dumped on the front yard. The weeds need to be gone, and the ground soaked deep with water before then. The hardest part of this is getting the grass roots out of the ground. If you checked out the posting here, you'll think, "damn, thats a dead grass!". But as I have learned, that grass is just resting, waiting for the next drop of water. The roots are incredibly hardy and can survive long periods without water. I think it is basically impossible to get all the roots out of the the front yard but I've got to make a good effort in getting the ones that are still sending out wiry green tentacles. I have a feeling the grass will keep showing it's face for some time before it dies off.
To review, some of the things that keep surfacing in conversations:

• using roundup?
• using mechanical help?
• using low-wage hired help?

poisons

Using some kind of weed killer would be really quick and easy! but wouldn't really save me too much time since it probably wouldn't kill the grass roots. Besides its absolutely a non-issue for me. It does not make any sense to dump poison on the ground when we actually get our water from pumping water out of that very ground. It is tough to see in this huge cycle(the water cycle), but it is very important that we take individual steps .

laborers

Using machines to help out would also be pretty quick and easy. But I actually think by the time I rent a trailer, get my cousin down here to haul a rented tiller, then figure out how best to use it, I don't know how much time it would actually save me. Also, something that I rarely utter for fear of sounding horribly futile, machines use gasoline and we need to start living like we have a finite supply. Also, one of my most dreaded moments is waking up on a beautiful weekend morning to the sounds of landscaping equipment whirring away somewhere close by (My personal favorite being the leaf blower; how lazy have we become!)
Now, we come back to the tough one again. Hired help. I have unsettled thoughts on this matter, but there are some things that drive me to do my own labor. I have had conversations where the person uses a tone that sounds like laboring is a waste of time, "[have someone else do it]". I've heard people use the tone of compassion for the people that line up outside Home Depot, and feeling a need to give them a job for the day. One thing certain for me is how disconnected I am from the people who work the land for us. It feels plain weird to say to someone that you are going to pull up your front yard with your own two hands. But it is even weirder for me to tell someone that I am hiring humans to do a job that is deemed too hard, time-consuming, and dirty for the likes of my strata of society.
We recently visited my Aunt in Santa Barbara who's father was something of a kindred spirit to me. She had just had a native landscape done in her front yard and she said that her dad would have loved it, but never would have liked someone else doing the work in his yard. Her father, a wonderfully feisty little man from post-revolutionary times in the Philippines, also once told us that "when the revolution came[to the US], 'they'd' be climbing up the bougainvillea." The bougainvillea will forever be the symbol for the divide between the 'have-nots' and the 'haves' in our society.

Community

This morning as I finished a clear path from the door step to the sidewalk through dust, green plastic mesh, and grass roots, I thought that all these things I am doing are small. Very small. But I think that the essence of the path towards sustainability will be the culmination of every ones small efforts; the good kind of grassroots. I also decided that I need to do more than simply lead quietly by example, but actually reach out to my neighborhood and ask for their thoughts. If only to get the stories about what they have thought about the past 2 years that our yard began this transformation(that's a nice way to put it.)
Certainly I have never met and talked to so many neighbors as I have while working in the front yard.