(re-post)
There were a lot more empty lots years ago when I was a child. This was the thought that crossed my mind as my body - car enclosed - sped by one earlier today.
The thought niggled around, as thoughts can do, and after awhile expanded to include the idea that, perhaps there were not really more vacant lots way back then, but that my experience of them was more of a -well, of an experience and not just a drive-, or even walk-by.
So with this 'theory' in mind I took myself back to see what would come of 'method' and 'observation.'
It took awhile to recall just where I had seen the empty lot: I was, after all, speeding by. But by a process of backtracking - I found it. It's on Pandora, north side, between Fernwood and Camosun streets. Nature had had full expression for several seasons, I would think, without interference of the human sort, aka mower madness.
There was evidence of my fellow beings, of course, but neatly camouflaged by vegetation: food wrappings, tin cans, a water bottle, cigarette package.
But, oh, the surprise and beauty of a lawn left to grow high and flower: six or seven kinds of grasses, possibly more, quite different in their tassels. A rose bush in yellow fragrant bloom. Trees, alongside where a house must have been, a recess in the earth but any trace of a foundation hidden by the green growth.
I might have investigated further - it was a deep lot - but there are inhabited houses on both sides and I don't mind trespassing but I try to avoid being confronted while doing so.
So I eye-trekked back further onto the property. Wild sweet pea, dark pink flowered. Goatsbeard or prairie oyster or salsify, the purple flowers still in their closed-thin-hand-pointing-upward state except for one full puffball which I did risk (curious eyes from the nearby houses or a sudden drop into a basement) approaching through the tall grass and liberated the seed pods with their parachutes into my pocket for later release in my garden.
Bindweed. Wild morning glory. Much, much, much, much............... Blue flowers along the side further along and white at the back of the property but I am unable to identify either.
An insect has landed and is exploring the back of my hand: six legs, thin body, looks like a fly; hard to write as it travels up my index finger, now onto pen. It sits on the cap and seems content to just sit. Usually, when you tell someone you are a writer, they tell you they have always wanted to write. "Is that what you are thinking?" I ask the fly.
Awareness shifts from the vacant lot - and funny how it is termed 'vacant' but it is anything but! - to the traffic on the road behind me and I turn and go back to the car. Fly comes with me and I have to give quite a puff of breath to get it to move before I put pen back into purse. "Your family would wonder where on earth you had gone," I tell it as it goes.
Posted on June 22, 2007 at 06:24 AM | Permalink
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