Reclaimed

Nature always finds a way

When I first came back to the farm in 2019, I had all kinds of ideas and fun projects in mind. Restoring it to a working farm, building big garden patches, rediscovering lost landmarks on the property, etc. In my adult years prior, I had successfully created a beautiful backyard garden in town, and I couldn’t wait to do the same on the family farm.

Nature, it seemed, had other plans.

Projects of any type have a funny way of being swallowed around here. Grass is aggressive. Plants have an agenda of their own. Large trees suddenly die, flinging large branches to the ground that block access or destroy something.

I’ve made attempts to carve out garden areas in the wild areas, yet many of them have been abandoned. A fenced area as an extension to my grandma’s wildflower garden, smashed by a massive fallen tree. More than one patch on the north was swallowed by bugs and invasive grass. A south side garden project overtaken by wild plants, mostly native.

In the small spaces I’ve gotten a garden to grow, wild plants have found a way to slide in beside them. Motherwort with tomatoes. Thistles beside the watermelon. Milkweed in the corn. Queen Ann’s Lace in the compost. Catnip, well, literally everywhere.

I do little to deter the growth of these plants. They are generally loaded with beneficial insects like bees and ladybugs, and probably more nutritious than the garden varieties I’m attempting to grow. They belong there, and whatever I seeded probably doesn’t. We need those wild plants more so than cultivated carrots and decorative watermelon. So I mostly leave them alone.

I’ve learned to work with Nature. She’s reclaimed a lot of spaces I thought would make a nice garden or path, and that’s okay. Because having a bounty of wild black raspberries like I did as a child is better than a cute trail.

I, too, have been reclaimed.