Spurned Gifts

It is the time of year in which the trees begin giving their gifts to the land. The river birches have shed most of their leaves and the maples will follow. The land wants them and needs them. Our hard mostly bare clay cries out for this blanket which in time will become new soil. I can't watch Mother rake them, bag them and take them away. I can't help her do this thing, when I feel the land groaning as she strips it. We have talked about this, and she will not bend. She has been stripping this land for almost 15 years. The good earth building layer I started when we first came here in the nineties is long gone. Her way of managing these things must prevail, and I will keep silent. Mother is 64 years old and it is too late for her to understand. She is happy with her limited collection of hardy daylillies, German iris, and trees that give no fruit or nuts but will survive in the clay. Some of the trees do have medicinal purposes which she does not know and does not care to know. It is a lucky thing that she recognises the value of the rosemary and lemon balm that I planted, and that she has not pulled up the honey suckle, or the horse radish that has multiplied by the mail box. A few violets managed to survive and the dandelions are hiding. She got their tops, but not their roots. I know they will return. Hopefully, I will get to them before she does. Mom loves the Bermuda grass that I loathe. She will feed it with all manner of poisons, and she will feed the clay with poisons too. She does not like for her plants to spread beyond their little clump boundaries, and the clay sees to this nicely. She likes the starving tree roots and clay between them to be covered with mulch that washes away with every rain. The trees are starting to hibernate and I must do the same. I must let my sadness about this way of going hibernate, because we are both here with each other and there is no other place for us to be. This weekend, I will go to other places to gather golden rod. It is every where but here. It is blooming, beautiful and useful. I will bring it home and dry it despite her protests which will be only small tokens of disapproval. We will accommodate each other though we do not understand the need for one of us to cling to one way and the other to follow another way.