Mercury's retrograde

And it's in full swing.  First thing this morning I heard road equipment at the end of the drive. I took my time getting dressed over coffee, heard it diminish up the hill and then return. I booked it outside just in time to see the Irises planted around the mailbox stream out across the end of the drive, just behind a brush hog.

Roadside mowing time.

I went down to survey the damage.

My road frontage has had it's own mini story this spring.  Well, it began last fall. The road commissioner ignored all signs and did nothing to any dirt road.  They waited until the bitter end to post, because the road commissioner is also a professional logger and there is a bit of conflict of interest there.  Because once the back roads are posted for weight limits, loggers can't haul out on them.

So our roads went all to hell, nearly swallowed my car a couple times.  I even got out there with rakes and shovels and implements of mass destruction (at least that Arlo Giuthrie song was running through my head) to level out the ruts (which was a mistake, because they turned into a quagmire-which prompted action, so it's all good)

Right after the spring thaw, we had town meeting and a new first selectperson. Next thing we know, all the back roads are being re-worked. I kept my mouth shut for the most part, and watched over several morning's coffee as the locals ditched and graded and rip rapped and burlapped my road, mostly leaving me alone since I know the less work they do the better. :)

Well, they did smooth down my ridge and deepen my ditch and spewed hay and even seeded. I couldn't resist and overseeded with wild-collected coltsfoot (gone to seed at the time) and organic flax seed I bought as a food supplement at the health food store and which germinated better than any of the aforementioned seed stock.

The flax was on the verge of bloom; the tender grasslings they had sowed about 6 inches high, and the coltsfoot really just barely making a show, and the damn brush hog went through and scrushed it all.  I was so stinking mad it was a good thing I couldn't find the road commissioner's cell number/

I left on errands shortly after that, just in time to see the tractor and mower attachment loading at the crossroads, and realized that it was not any of the locals-apparently a private contractor on the mowing, so I let it slide.

The worst part was that they went right around my mailbox and mowed down all the Siberian Iris I had there, thank the luck they had already bloomed so maybe they will recover.  And I am holding out hope the flax was just pinched back and will bloom bushier than ever, as I gazed at a few early lonely bright blue blossoms severed on the banking.


When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, so on the way back home I stopped and grabbed a big bouquet of fallen black-eyed susans ( one of my favorites) and stuck them on a vase on the deck.  Then I went back out and raked a huge back end of the subbie wagon full of roadside forage for the goat's dinner (although I wondered if I spent more in gas than I saved in hay and grain)

I just wish that they would wait to mow until the perennial flowers have gone to seed, the yarrow and black eyed susan and Queen Ane's lace. The mowing is really supposed to keep back the brush, the roadside would be so much prettier if they allowed them to flower out with the native wildflowers.

Or the occasional sowed flax. :P