THE LONG ERODED PATH

(Music: THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD, Lennon-McCartney) (info./disclaimers) (glossary) (index) (gardening guide)

The long, eroded path
That leads from your door
May never disappear
I've seen erosion there before
The water flows through bootprints there
Drainage is really poor

I tried sowing clover seeds
After raking the surface fine
I even watered it
And marked it off with lime
But it's still eroding there
It gets wiped out every time

Many times I've seen that path
And many times I've tried
To keep others from walking there
Until that clover's high

Peg slipped and hurt her back
On that long, eroded path
Mike took a nosedive there
Rushing to a class
He said he'd walked with care
But it went downhill real fast

And still I'm taken aback
By that long, eroded path
Nothing will establish there
Once footprints come to pass
The soil's almost always bare
It can't even grow crabgrass

Comments: Perennial clovers fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil (as most legumes do) while providing cover and compostable greens when sown in paths. Crabgrass is a tenacious perennial rhizomatous grass which spreads by means of underground runners.
Always drawing lessons from adversity, the Beetless have developed over the course of many years the serenity to accept the things they cannot change, the courage to change the things they can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

 
Excerpted from The Beetless' Gardening Book: An Organic Gardening Songbook/Guidebook, copyright 1997 by Chris Roth (info./disclaimers) (glossary) (index) (gardening guide)