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When we were kids, the subdivision where my bff now lives was a field of scotchbroom. We called all vacant lots fields. We keep asking, where did it go? The seeds remain viable for 80 years, underground. A Scotsman planted it to remind him of home + now it reminds us of home. This neighborhood was once part of the first settler homestead in the area, Chambers Prairie.
Many people are allergic to scotchbroom’s little yellow flowers.
Across the train tracks was a sod farm, my whole childhood. I once rode through it in the back of my dad’s truck, with my cousin Alycia, while someone hopped out and scavenged remnants of sod, the grass I walked through in our backyard for the rest of my childhood.
There is still scotchbroom between the train tracks and the fence that borders the neighborhood. It grows taller than we are. This neighborhood was built 17 years ago. Now it feels established. The fences are gray and covered in lichen and graffiti and rot. As they should be.
There was a lavender farm here in the 1950s. Was it a spider breeding ground, as an impossibly young pest control salesman once said at the front door? There were so many spiders when we came here, late September of second grade, to dig up lavender with my mom’s bff. A good time of year for spiders.
This neighborhood was a field of scotchbroom when we were kids. We try not to say “invasive species.” It was introduced by a Scotsman to remind him of home + now it reminds us of home.
Where did it all go? There must have been a concentrated effort to eradicate it.
Seeds remain viable for 80 yrs underground.
On the phone, I describe the field that was once here, and tell Jordan scotchbroom is hard and prickly but not thorny. I imagine how it would remain, I mean, how it would hold its shape, if you fell into it.
Thank you to Jennifer Berney and Sarah Tavis at The Scrap Heap for their Accounts of Wonder workshop tonight, where I had the blessed opportunity to process how Kaden and I crawled through a hole in the fence (a portal) and found the missing scotchbroom next to the train tracks. The invitation, which I accepted, was to draw from memory with no visual reference. The scotchbroom was done with eyes (mostly) closed.
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