Even if the weather isn’t cooperating, Spring is leaping forward. Mariner’s seed trays are full of little plants eager to be put in the garden. Just today he received red onion plants; they must go directly into the garden bed. Also just today, the weather was mild enough for him to prepare the garden bed for those onions. Mariner is grossly out of shape.
Mariner truly can’t handle his entire garden anymore. Each year he makes a deal with Mother Nature to take care of an increasing part of the garden he can’t manage. He has mentioned in past posts about his partnership with moles to control Japanese Beetles. That worked out well.
He discovered a fine looking weed (perhaps a Speedwell variety) that covers the 
ground as completely as grass and has a tiny white flower. Mariner plans to use it in some beds and places where grass just doesn’t want to grow – and the ground cover doesn’t need to be mowed!
Given the advantage of living in retirement and thereby protected from chimpanzian aggression to survive, mariner’s need to compete with nature has subsided. Mother Nature has been running the evolution show for 3.2 billion years since the first microbial sludge pumped oxygen into a methane atmosphere. If one can pause for a moment while suppressing the anxieties of modern human life, one realizes that Mother Nature is the real, educated, experienced boss of the biosphere AND humans – who are a troublesome creation to be sure.
While the human version of a natural biosphere involves everything from lawn Nazis to massive open pit mining complete with poisonous waste, in fact Mother Nature knows what really works in the long run, human evolution notwithstanding.
So mariner lets Mother Nature manage what he cannot manage. It actually is entertaining to watch how she meters out the advantages and disadvantages to all living things as they take their place in the biosphere and in mariner’s yard. True, the yard is no French castle garden, but such presentation is not of value to Mother Nature.
One annoying element that is out of control (from mariner’s point of view) is rabbits. They are highly destructive to vegetables and flowers alike. Humans are to blame because they decided to live in large, crowded towns where rabbit predators choose not to go. Subject to the sins of his own kind, mariner must play the role of rabbit predator.
The world of life is fascinating when human judgments are set aside. Take a long moment to visit a naturalized park to see what reality really looks like.
Ancient Mariner