Weedy Wonder in My Absence

I have always had a passion for ferns, and mosses, and that odd collection of plant-like green things that live in the in between world, things like liverwort, clubmosses, and horsetail. My loving fondness for them is a childhood thing. They were woodland friends, the bed where I would lay, away from the "other" world, and stare into the treetops, the woodland world a living omnimax of life.

The appeal was in their evergreen-ness. Regardless the season they always remind me life was there. Some ferns would fade, impress there fine shape on beds of Polytrichum, but the whole house was moist, the scent of rich humus, fertile.

When I learned their names they were even more enchanting. Rarely such things as stodgy Douglas-this, or obvious color name like white or red something. All the contrary. They were imaginary things - ferns of Deer or Maidenhair, Lace, Lady and Licorice; mosses of Rope and Beak and Broom. So when it came to My garden, this world of green on loan to me for my few years, I knew I needed shade, and wet, and and the scent of decay. There could be no other than a sasso, "weed garden", as Motomi Oguchi calls it, and within it a yarimizu, a small pond and side wetland.

The garden has been happily evolving in its weedy wonder in my absence; these many weeks away on the Gulf Coast. Ferns and mosses and horsetails have erupted. While I have been tracking oil on beaches the sasso has been washed in gentle rain, and mild days, the greens have taken over under an umbrella of cumulus. In every seam and surface a bright flush of fern and mat of moss has begun. Without a a single spade being turned, the garden has begun gifting.

Thank you Jenn for watching over it with great kindness.