THE UGLY NORTH SIDE

Autumn is upon us. Leaves are everywhere. Five summers we have spent in this house and still we have done nothing to improve its ugly north side.

How ugly is it? Well, it’s a weedy, broken-brick covered wasteland about five feet wide that runs about 100 feet in length, a barren stretch where our house and driveway meet the gravelled side alley. The previous owners laid down the broken brick, hoping to make it neat. But then, every summer, ten gazillion maple trees dropped their seeds and a hundred billion dandelions sent their white fluff through the air to join then. And every autumn, an uncounted throng of maple, elm, ash, poplar, linden, apple and who-knows-how-many other trees dropped their leaves into the wind. The leaves made compost among the broken bricks. The maples and dandelions heard about the compost, and rushed over to take a crack at growing.

What should we do about it? That is the question. Should we get new clean rocks, lay down bark chips, plant grass, artificial turf? David bought a super-duper propane weed burner to fry the mess like hot salad. Apparently some seeds do better after exposure to extreme heat. Then he bought containers of vile and disgusting chemicals to do the job. But environmental common sense has now banned the chemicals that kill everything in sight and keep it dead for a hundred years. And so, most of the time, the ugly north side is—well—ugly, at least by the standards of the beflowered south and west sides. Out of our direct line of view, either from our windows, the main yard, or the front street, it makes its own plans, recovering with remarkable ease from the holocausts we foist upon it.

Despite my sympathies for David and his mission, I find it surprising, and a little bit reassuring that—the moment our backs are turned--nature rebels against bending to our will. Alan Weisman, author of The World without Us (St. Martin’s Press, 2007) presents a fascinating picture of how Manhattan would begin to disintegrate in only two days if all humans left town. Without its pumps, the subways would fill with water, the streets would collapse, taking the buildings down with them. Maybe something good could still grow if we lose all control and accidentally destroy our current civilization.

A second example of nature’s tenacity can be found on the east side of our house. In an attempt to accommodate the double garage, the steps to the upper suite, and the narrow area that promised to become the ugly north side of the south fence, the previous owners poured a concrete blanket over the 47-foot width of the yard, stretching from the back alley to the garage. They carved out only one tiny square. It is a space of a few inches around the trunk of a huge old ash tree that probably stood grandly on its own when a tiny old shack occupied the lot. Now it crowds so close to the house that its branches hang over the upper deck. How does it live, I wonder. Do its roots reach all the way down to the water table? Do they extend all the way to the gravelled alleys, or under the lawn next door? Unable to shake the perverse idea that I might influence the fate of a huge tree in a blanket of concrete, I water the ash, put the hose on it several times a year, letting the water drip slowly for hours so it won’t overflow the tiny square and pour down the driveway. Just how the water could possibly find the roots so far down there I have no clue.

The concrete blanket, only ten years old, requires little maintenance other than the scraping of snow and the gathering of leaves. Unlike the broken brick, it is immune to the influence of compost. Still, on our first year in the house, we noted that a sunflower, remarkably similar to the sunflowers in the yard across the alley, had taken root in the gravel at the northeast corner. The following year, a sunflower rooted in the tiny square. Encouraged by my watering, it seeded three children for the next summer. This year the tiny square hosts about a dozen hardy sunflowers, in addition to the giant ash. It just makes you wonder, even though it faces north and never gets watered, if sunflowers couldn’t find a place among the baby maples and dandelions already rooting for next year in the broken brick