This started as a list of plant species in my messy backyard. It’s become an essay. In hopes that it’s helpful to someone, I’ll just leave it here.
My front yard is grass. Unfenced, usually well kept. Unfertilized, unwatered, and unweeded, but mowed. It fits in with the neighborhood. But the backyard, that’s mine. A square about 50 feet on a side, the north side. It’s a magical place. Beyond the shadow of the house it’s full sun all day. In the shadow it’s cool and moist all summer long. You could draw a line as clear as day between those two zones.
Dandelion. Every lawn in Alaska would revert to this plant without determined effort and the application of chemistry. It will grow everywhere grass will. Full sun, shade, pavement, dandelions don’t give a shit.
Chickweed lives in the cool shade, where the snow is last to melt and water takes the longest to evaporate.
Twisted stalk (watermelon berry). Only one. Matches the distribution I see in the wild. Even in its happy places it’s widely spaced. Very surprised to see it here.
Fireweed. If dandelions never came, fireweed would rule.
Cow parsnip (pushki). Hardy. Wicked blisters if you get the juice on you. Tallest plant in the yard. Give it an inch and it will take a mile. Obnoxious stinking bully. If it weren’t so common I’d admire it more. Still, I admire it more than most people. The flower buds cooked as tempura are excellent and unlike anything I’ve ever tasted. I am no fan of making excuses for crappy tasting foraged food, this one is actually good.
Raspberries, 2 varieties, the tart wild one and the sweet candy golden one.
A lovely Aspen and a lovely Spruce, both grown from twiggy plants “allowed to live.” 25 and 30 feet tall now. I feel a little old.
Roses. They don’t belong here, out of their zone, transplants from 20 years ago, a “gift” from someone. Very late bloomers. Somehow they manage to survive.
Ostrich fern, transplanted from a patch an hour’s drive away. I wasn’t sure it would survive with no creek to drink from. It loves it here and has established a large multigenerational family in spite of me harvesting it as spring greens.
Some wild grass.
Horsetail. Plentiful, grows tall the shade of raspberries and cow parsnip.
A few other “weeds,” plants I haven’t bothered to identify, and the mushrooms which appear in late summer.
I eat the raspberries, fiddleheads, and some years fry the cow parsnip flower buds. Coprinus comatus, the shaggy mane, is welcome sight if I can catch it in time. Always good for pot of mushroom soup. The neighbors are welcome to the raspberries, there are more than I can pick. I find sweet delight in seeing the excitement children bring to picking raspberries. It completely overcomes the concern of how they trample the bushes. The bushes, I’ve learned, always come back. I never neglect to smell the roses.
I don’t quite let this go wild. For reference, it’s been about 15 years since this was tight lawn and raised bed vegetable gardens. Alaska produces the sweetest carrots and peas you’ll ever taste, I’d put money on that. Any place I don’t attack the pushki it establishes perennial dominance. I protect the edge of where the ferns choose to expand, and they continue to, slowly enlarging their border toward the edge of the shadow of the house. The raised beds once full of peas, carrots, lettuce, and cabbage are long gone, hidden under ever expanding raspberries. I make some effort to remove the dead canes in the spring and establish paths through the bushes for fall when it’s time to pick. The pushki wants that space too, I defend the raspberries. They generally hold their own against the grass.
I try to do the right thing in the time I have left. I have plenty of time in years, it just measures differently as you age. Making some space for the wild has been a right thing.
by FrenchFryRaven