Bog Myrtle & Peat

The oats resurge, and now I find them through the turnip field in clumps and rustling spires. They spring up from the gateways and the handy corners where the bull was fed in winter; he has crapped them into life again, and now they come to me as a weed.

Here’s a reminder that the old farms were polluted with hangovers like these. You can’t expect to sow a crop one year and have done with it the next. Of course there will be echoes, and my copybook is inevitably blotted with the backlog of my previous work.

We’re trained to hate mess these days. I can understand the desire to spray away this resurgence and keep the place tidy. But if I could guess, I’d say that two dozen good sheafs of oats are now growing around the yard and the pens where the bull lay in the frost. I have no interest in cutting or making use of this accidental crop, so it will go to the birds. I have contaminated this place with variety. Who am I to restore order?

I worried that the shift from oats to turnips would dispel the progress I had made so far. But now I have oats and turnips, and the ground begins to hum.