My front yard, all bushy with drought-tolerant bracken


And the yard now, after my landlady decided to hire someone to do something about it.

It's her house, she can do what she likes. "Gardeners" around here tend to know only how to garden down to the dirt. There's no sensibility about learning what kinds of plants are part of the local biota. Instead, there seems to be a desire to remove anything that is less tall than a tree, and more tall than an English-style lawn.

I see lots of dirt gardeners around here. There's a plenitude of bare soil in people's yards and along the sidewalks. I don't understand why that's attractive at all.