Backlit Grasses

On the backside of the high school grow some backlit grasses--this year's placeholders for schoolyard garden dreams. The raised beds lovingly and optimistically installed in recent years at the town's middle school and elementary schools are living their dreams, prospering with their intended vegetables planted by students and cared for over the summer by volunteers.

Some glitch this past spring, however, left the high school gardens unplanted and untended, allowing the weeds to throw a party in the rich soil. Better to say that the garden is now a weed study lab, providing insights into the succession from intention to unintention. Old buildings and civilizations tend to follow a similar path. In the first photo, one of the many species of foxtail.

In the second photo, barnyard grass arches across in the foreground. There's a smartweed in there, too, just behind the barnyard grass, leaning to the right.

Weeds seem like free spirits, self-sufficient. But weeds need our neglect. They need the fresh ground laid bare and enriched by good intentions. "Knowing" us better than we know ourselves, they patiently wait for us to move on to other things, having set the stage for their glory.