I love walking through California meadows. If it is not bramble full, bare feet are best so that I can catch the rhythms of the earth under my feet.
I was walking through my meadow this morning, my meadow that used to be a neatly trimmed lawn in the front of my home. Finances and abilities and a suddenly deficient irrigation system allowed the wildflowers to take over and begin to push out the lawn. My lawn, along with the house on the opposite corner share a distinction as the shame of the block where most neighbors keep their lawns neatly trimmed and reasonably watered. I know I will have to mow it and cut down the flowers so that when I sell the house in the next two to three months it looks more like a house befitting a suburban lifestyle.
But, Antioch is not, strictly speaking, a suburb. It was not built to be the bedroom community it now is. The Bay Miwok first made their villages near the river with their round tule houses. Later as the settlers moved into California it became one of their oldest cities in California. Incorporated in 1872, Antioch was founded in 1848 next to the San Joaquin river by John Marsh. It started with a slaughterhouse, smokehouse and a pier to serve commerce through the shipping industry. In 1851 was it was named Antioch after the biblical city of Antioch in Syria that was built by two rivers. It was not long before there was a train depot, a coal mine and later a copper ore mine. In the early 20th century the DiMaggio’s came in and started a fishing business. Now the River-walk sports a lovely vaudeville theater and any number of small business. But where I live, the newer part of Antioch is full of strip mall chain stores and restaurants, good size houses with trimmed lawns and any manner of security systems and an inordinate number of American flags. This is not a town for meadows, although it does have an incredible amount of open space and lovely parks and nature retreats. This is town for lawns. I let mine go.
You see, I love the idea of wildflowers, (I believe they are called weeds here), choosing to root where they find a home. Indeed, when I weeded my parent’s garden with my father, so that in early Spring we could plant the year’s vegetables, I made pleadings to retain this flower or that. Are nasturtiums really weeds? I guess they are if they choose a home in the plot reserved for lettuce, collard greens and kale. He would laugh at me and only occasionally allowed a patch of bright orange poppies or such to remain. For him negotiating pulling weeds was an amusing eccentricity of his poet daughter. But for me they recalled the many weekends my parents, brother and I would pack into the car and drive to some wild land in California where there were open meadows or towering redwoods or shell-filled beaches. These were times and places of freedom. So now, I love meadows, anywhere, even in front of my house.
I don’t enjoy the fake nature that lawns provide. They are water wasters in a part of the state that leans towards deserts and drought. They lack variety and have a very limited color arc. And one doesn’t walk on a lawn, one waters it and takes pride in its regimented lines and cropped blades. But for me it is the wild that holds beauty. It is the caprice of nature growing dandelions and poppies and any number of other plants whose names I don’t know. So here I am, my barefoot self, walking in my meadow that once was a lawn and loving it.
Are you trying to reclaim any part of a city or town for nature?