The Schaap Outback

 

Here's our back yard--yesterday. I can't compute the number of hours my just birthday-ed wife has been out here, picking weeds, making sure everything's growing. The idea is to let it go "native" but tend it nonetheless, and tend it she does. 

Just so happens that right now, things out back are about as colorful as they get. I can't tell you what kind of joy it brings to my soul to look out here and walk out here--and into the acre of restored prairie I've been tending, while she manages the back yard. I'd tell you this is my kingdom, but in all seriousness I'm its thrall. 

This year, the very first year since we moved out here to the valley of the Floyd, we've got an abundance of milkweed--in fact, I've picked quite a bit. I know, I know--the monarchs aren't doing well because there isn't the ready supply there's been for centuries, but we've got more than our share. I'm always happy to spot a monarch--they're here, but not in abundance--but milkweed is popping up in clumps all over, and as much as I like them--and the monarchs they attract--they're something of a pest this year (and for the first time).

Last week I was bragging to my sister about how gorgeous our whole back acre is looking these days, during summer's glory. We've had plenty of rain, and heat that would be wearying if it weren't for those occasional showers--really beautiful growing weather. So what's out back right now is bright and colorful.

But it's not the flower shop. Native prairie is showy in its own quiet way, more reserved than a barrel full of annuals. Right now these guys are all over, in abundance this year, yellowing the place as if dawn's early light weren't enough.

If we'd have a thousand more purple prairie flowers, I'd be thrilled. The truth is, I once tried to dig a bunch out of a ditch just down the road to start them in our backyard. I think it worked, although for a bunch of summers they were barely here. We've got bunches of them now, but not enough--never enough. Maybe next year.

The bee bomb's been slow this summer, it seems, but they're all over out back right now. You gotta love 'em too. 

Cone flowers reign, but they're not really all that majestic, not in the least proud. This year, they've come not as spies, but in battalions. If they didn't paint the place up, I'd come close to calling them weeds, but never let it be said. They can have whatever room they want to take, and they will. They are.

They're swarming through Barb's backyard. They tower if they have to--three or four feet high--and just keep coming. These blossoms will fade, but not for a while; and when they do, there'll be more. They just can't stop multiplying.

And that's okay with me.

So I told my sister I wished she could see out back, and she told me to take some pictures. So here they are and here it is. I can't imagine anyone else in the world being as enthralled by our July glory, but right now what the two of us work at is almost heavenly with native color.

We've got green tomatoes galore, peppers more than we need, and right now more than a dozen muskmelon, although it'll be a couple weeks or so before we can serve 'em up. They're mostly hiding behind a jungle of leaves right now. There are two of them here, if you can see 'em.

You wanted to see, sis. So here I thought I'd try to show you. They're not easy to shoot, like prairie, like mountains, like Lake Michigan. They're much better in real life. Trust me. 

Here's a little men's chorus. Hear 'em sing?