Diario de sarahwilson1

With my purple coneflower tall behind my second-year blueberry bushes, I am hidden from recognizable view by the wild that uses the space I have built for them. Yesterday, in a few minutes of pausing, I watched a rabbit slip through my fence to roll in a sun-lit patch of dust and an adult robin delivering a blueberry to their demanding fledgling. All as various pollinators I am growing familiar with work the species yarrow just in front of me. It feels like I have grown a patch of Eden in my yard.

If I see a bumble bee at 6 AM, it's going to be a Brown-Belted. I was just out in my sanctuary garden. It's almost 6 PM, overcast with a light rain starting to fall. My fleabane is shaking with the activity of 3 workers and I check to make sure but I don't really need to. I know who it is.

Yesterday, I watched my young neighbor walking up and down his driveway sprayer in hand, drenching the divides between his concrete squares with herbicide. He knows not that he risks so much else, too. I look at his still-life of a home -- every non-native, big-box-store plant, which is all he has, is trimmed and tidy and life-less. Makes me sad.

But I am sure he looks over at my home, with my eclectic, not-the-least-bit-"carpet"-like lawn and the "weeds" peeking up in my drive, and it makes him sad. Possibly angry. Certainly a head shaker.

It is too soon for me to speak. I need to find a way in, a connection point, a common thread. I know the man loves his home and probably recycles with the best of us. Until I can find a kind point of connection, any comment I would make would only hammer at the silent divide that already exists. That's not a way forward.