Published in Caustic Frolic 2023
Whoever hung the plastic bag on Lucy’s doorknob didn’t even knock, as if he knew what he was doing was wrong. The bag contained a single, color photograph of her front yard, a hillside wedge of goldenrod, Soldago canadensis, and knapweed, Centaurea nigra. In bold, 25-point font lettering the notice declared: ‘You have violated the 10-inch rule.’ At first Lucy imagined a feisty neighbor playing a joke on her. Hah, hah, reminiscent of Aerosmith’s, When I whip out my big 10 inch, but then she got another notice with the official town screed in small neat paragraphs on the cardstock’s back. Her neighbors unquestioningly followed the rules: there was not a blade of grass higher than three inches anywhere on their front lawns. Having a clear line of sight on a hilly road, in theory, prevented car accidents, and reduced the opportunity for flattening of rabbits and pet cats. It was bad luck to run over a rabbit, and a tragedy to run over your pet cat. And 10 inches was the law.
This edict shouldn’t have surprised Lucy. Some neighborhoods legislated acceptable house colors, or the obligation to regularly paint your house despite any bad turn your life had taken – like your husband quitting his lucrative job, or your kid, having read too much Timothy Leary and deciding to drop out and tune in. Leaving the radial arm saw in front of the garage, along with random, unstacked two-by-fours, suggested a mind hell-bent on disseminating pandemonium.
A month later, as Lucy ascended the hill to her house, she saw with escalating horror that someone had mowed her hillside wedge. She called the town. The silences on the phone suggested the authority was listening, but all he did was repeat bureaucratic phrases that acknowledged no responsibility and discounted the existence of any other perspective.
Lucy happened to be at home the next time the sickle mower made its awkward way up the road, its industrial rattle taking over the soundscape. Flinging open her front door, she shouted and gestured until the operator turned down the engine, but not before he had mowed half the wedge. “Wildflowers and chaos have a purpose,” she said.
That night at dinner she lamented to her husband and two teenage daughters the loss of safe havens, and the death of large numbers of innocent, unaware insects.
“Lucy, it’s one wildflower garden,” her husband said. “They’re all over the yard.”
He didn’t get it.
So Lucy and her two teenage daughters searched online and at garage sales for guardian gnomes. Following an appropriate and very short, non-denominational blessing, they arranged the gnomes in the wedge. Some they stuck on top of one-foot-long rebar so that they wouldn’t be completely hidden by the knapweed or goldenrod.
At first neighbors didn’t know what to make of the squat, ugly creatures, but it was hard not to laugh, and because laughing was infectious, whimsical gnomes appeared on other lawns. The valley ridge road was prime walking territory: the vistas of the floodplain below and hills to the east and south were breathtaking, and drew visiting pedestrians from all over the small city. These visitors couldn’t help but laugh too. And if that wasn’t enough, the steep hilly parts of lawns, and gullies, and the wet spots and dry spots, any weird places where you’d think a lawn would thrive, suddenly reverted back to Nature. Sometimes there was gnome protection, sometimes not. Lucy’s front yard had been transformed into four-foot wide pathways through swaths of clover, henbit, buttercup, milkweed, and chicory. Before long, Lucy was handing out harvested seeds to passersby. Everywhere it seemed, where once green seas of concrete had reigned, there were now wildflowers of all colors.
Then neighbors stopped mowing their back lawns, leaving up thickets of honeysuckle, rosa rugosa, and buckthorn where song birds nested. The morning symphony of birds was so loud and complex that it often masked the noise of traffic that rose from the valley floor.
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The code officer lived two miles down the hill. He started walking uphill, past Lucy’s house, not out of duty, but curiosity. One late afternoon, after a long day at the high school where Lucy taught biology, she looked out her front window and saw the code guy. He tipped the brim of his baseball cap down, looked around, then deadheaded a knapweed and snatched a gnome holding a pitchfork, discretely securing the prizes in his jeans pocket. He walked on, hands in his pockets, whistling.
Patricia Dutt 