A Time for Everything Under the Sun

24 April 2009 was tilling day, and the beginning of our adventure across the street. We started with such great expectations and for the most part they came true. We jumped in and grew many things. What started with our neighbor Joyce welcoming us into her backyard and her daughter Marcie continuing to give us open access has ended. Our choice after seven years.

How many people do you know that would let you use their backyard as if it was your own? We had access virtually any time of the day. And as much as we could get them to take the produce, the only rental cost was the fruits and vegetables that were produced. Suburban Sharecropping is what we called it and it worked. In Joyce's last days we knew that she could look out onto a green yard and that spurred us on to grow.

Ultimately lives and times change. We found ourselves in a constant battle with Bermuda grass and weeds. But the Bermuda was and irritant beyond contempt. We tried things we never would have tried in the beginning. Weed cloth, pulling by hand, mulch, herbicides were to no avail. It became tiring to walk across the street knowing we would see our vegetables partially grown over with the Kudzu of the west.

But it was more than the Bermuda. Marcie, Tyson and the boys always made us welcome, but we were still walking into someone else's yard. My personal sense of space had alarms going off. It was me that felt like an intrusion. I used the alley gate and that helped, but as the family grew I couldn't help but feel like an interloper. This was my internal workings nothing they did or said.

The final decision was made in January. We were starting to plan for this year's plantings. The no-till method was working well on our property and for the most part across the street. We were confident the plants were getting nourished. We were talking one evening about weeding across the street in preparation for planting. I happened to look out into our back yard, specifically some unnamed unfinished job and I became overwhelmed. I looked at the tasks I needed to finish here, the fact that baseball season was beginning and I would be around less and i thought now is the time to change. I felt I wasn't taking care of my own first and that any time spent away would make finishing more difficult.

We talked about the decision and made adjustments. I still haven't finished everything I want to, but some have been completed. Many days bring a reminder of the decision, and more often than not it is an affirmation that we made the correct choice. We won't have as much produce, but one of the ways we are adjusting is to look to maximize our own land usage. Disposing of some stuff is helping and looking closely at what we keep is important.

Ultimately if we believe that hard times are coming, we can't have unfinished jobs, materials and work cluttering our minds and efforts.