David's New Favorite Word: Natural

David was never a perfectionist when it came to our lawn, but still, he wanted it to look good. (I'm convinced lawns are strictly a male thing, like reading the sports page in the morning paper.) When we were in the planning stages of our house I suggested we do away with a lawn entirely and plant some kind of ground cover, but no, to David there's a house, there's a lawn. I harbor my own opinion that it's just too damn much fun operating a rider mower to give it up for ground cover.

So what it came down to was that I was in charge of the garden in the immediate vicinity of the house (which did not include bushes, only flowers) and he was in charge of the rest of the property. We'd had to clear some of the woods for a new driveway and once the area on either side filled in again David decided that, apart from the lawn and my garden, everything else should remain "natural". It had been my idea to cut through the woods with a few unobtrusive, meandering paths, lay down wood chips and place outdoor wooden chairs a couple of places for just sitting and meditating. 

Then we got down to thinking about it. The regular maintenance it required in a climate where undergrowth takes over like a jungle convinced us it was too much work. And was this the kind of thing we'd really put to regular use? Probably not, but the idea had sounded cool when I'd first thought of it. I settled for a little clearing where I plopped down a hand made chair that seems to fit the flavor of the place--crudely constructed and half covered in moss and lichen, it's barely discernible in the middle of the woods, and occasionally I do go there and just sit and think.

But the "natural" thing started to get to me. Every time I wanted him to cut something down or trim it David would say no, we had to leave it natural. Some of the bushes started to obstruct part of the front window, but David wanted them to look natural, so they remained unpruned. Finally I took matters into my own hands and when he saw that I was prepared to override natural with what he considered inferior pruning he acquiesced and did it himself. 

Native salal covers most of the ground outside the lawn and garden area, and this became David's favorite plant because it looked natural. He would nurse it and prune around it so it could grow unchallenged by anything else to the point where it was covering and taking over not only the ground area in our woods, but creeping out and over the country lane we share with our neighbors. It was tall enough that it formed an obstruction to our view coming out of our driveway, and every time I came up and out onto the lane it was like playing Russian roulette with other cars. Being a country lane it didn't have much traffic, but still, I always inched my way out of our driveway afraid another car would broadside me.

When a neighbor finally took matters into his own hands and paid someone to cut both sides of the lane back so it would be possible to partially pull off to the side when meeting another car (it's only one lane wide) David was apoplectic. It was his property and he wanted it left natural. He was going to call the neighbor and remind him of the fact and that he had no business cutting down someone else's salal. 

I sat him down on the deck with a glass of wine after he got home that evening, told him such talk would accomplish nothing but hard feelings that would probably never go away, and decided there was only one way to handle this: treat him to his favorite dish, caramelized onion. I put it on to simmer and before long, as the fragrance wafted out and engulfed him he calmed like a lion in a catmint patch. It was better than arguing.