September 5, 2006
Lagniappe
Honeysuckle redux:
There’s been a humongous revelation at our house up here between the Cambrian and the Silurian on Ordovician Heights. As I wrote a while back, after forty-plus years, we’ve finally got rid of all, I repeat, all, the invasive Japanese honeysuckle that so well succeeded where its homeland’s more inglorious attempts failed.
The back yard now looks like city park. The parents of the kids next door have now got rid of all their honeysuckle, too, together with their many and very densely assorted weeds and undergrowth. The neighbor over the hill behind us has suddenly got friendlier. The kids next door have met their kids and started playing together in the marvelous childlike irrelevancy for common boundaries.
The folks over the hill came over and met the folks next door and said they didn’t even know there was a house down there, and Welcome to the hood. These folks (over the hill and next door together with a lot of others on our street) are university people. Customarily, university people around here don’t have a lot to do with one another, so there’s no telling where this might lead or what may have started just by getting rid of our honeysuckle. Ecumenia in academia? Even maybe the medical center and the college?
Leadership probably works best when one is not conscious of it. When CP, our resident landscraper, took things in hand to get rid of the ravenous honeysuckle hordes encroaching us from all sides, the general idea was to let in a bit of sunshine for some of the less aggressive flora. One of the first surprises was not so much the light, but the breeze, the pleasant circulation that stirred not only the air around us, but moved some of those plants that could into waving gently in what (anthropologically) I’d like to think is gratitude.
But there’s more. CP’s a librarian. Librarians are good at opening up conversation. So the big surprise, the lagniappe, is that “friendly” is becoming the norm. “Neighborly” may even be right around the corner. The other late afternoon, I was firing up the Weber to sear some salmon, and heard a child’s voice. “Hello. Are you camping out?” Our neighbor’s daughter was standing on the low, dry-stack stone wall running along the edge of our patio where, pre-honeysuckle, she’d have needed a periscope to see through and a machete to get through. As of yesterday, there’s even a tent rigged in her backyard for some serious camping out.
Actually, this is not all walking-in-the-park-with-George-one-day. It’s as well affecting the economy. Our landscape guy and his team of four have already been hired by three more air- and space- and sunshine-lovers down the street. Those of us around here who are over the hill in more ways than one couldn’t better be pleased — and, of course, just a little bit proud.