After the Mullein

After a long dry spell, rain is finally falling in Northeast Lower Michigan.  We have had over 1-1/2 inches of precipitation in the past couple days, a good, continuous, soaking rain, the kind of rain farmers around here badly need.  Much the same cool, wet weather is helping bring the Duck Lake Wildfire under control in the eastern Upper Peninsula.

Duck Lake fire burns to Lake Superior's shore.
(Michigan DNR Photo)

Here at home the Mullein War is largely over.  I have extracted all the mullein from the septic field and areas around the house.  Quite a few remain in the power line right of way near the road.  I'll get to them this week.  However, other kinds of weeds remain atop my septic area, and they pose a quandary.

Attack of the Living Mullein!  "Oh, Dr. Freakish, what
have you done!  They're eating the septic system!"

The problem:  Weeds in sandy soil near the road were
easy to pull.  Those in rocky soil had to be dug out.

Many people cover their septic fields with lawn.  However, when I moved north I vowed that my home would be a Turf Free Zone.  Turf grass seems incompatible with living in the woods.  Why make your house in God's Country look like it was plucked, sod and all, from a street in Sterling Heights or North Muskegon?  Moreover, I hate tending a lawn.  I've done that for almost 60 years, starting in the mid-1950s in Abington, PA, with the family's push-reel mower.  I've done my part for monoculture.

I know, for lots of guys lawn care is a near-holy ritual.  They spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours putting down sod, riding their beefy lawn tractors, soaking the lawn with fertilizer and weed killer, all in an effort to make their homes look like the 18th Hole of a very exclusive golf club.  Pursuit of the perfect lawn can manifest in behavior which psychologists might call Morbid Lawn Syndrome.  For example, a friend in Bloomfield Hills, a reader of this blog, has a neighbor who cuts his grass 2-3 times each week, and once every day (and sometimes twice) uses his blower, which sounds like a runaway jet engine, to drive every leaf, twig, and dust mote from the sacred sod.

Bah, humbug!

Lawn care is boring.  Lawn fertilizer is among the worst things you can use around a lake.  When I moved from Detroit I gave away my aged, noisy, smokey lawn mower and vowed never to own one again.  But what to plant atop the septic field?  Perhaps a shallow-rooted ground cover which will choke out renegade vegetation.  Something native to Michigan would be best.  I have to do some research. •••