Second Anniversary ~ Flash💥Devos ~ Thanks!

The spiritual life of home and place shifts with the seasons for me. As my Thank-You gift to all of you who have come alongside me for the past two years of Flash💥Devos, I offer my article about the world I encounter on my lawnmower, an unlikely but perfect place to connect with creation. May the ways you tend to the world bring you surprise and insight, too.

Around the Yard in 100 Days

by Marianne Abel-Lipschutz

Spring mowing in Iowa releases the sweet pineapple aroma of chamomile. I discovered this stubborn, single stem plant in our driveway gravel, creeping improbably across compacted zones like it owns this place. Driving from one side of the lawn to mow beyond a building, I trim it so often that it barely tops my toes. Also known as Common Mayweed, this herb defies annual baths of RoundUp, subzero winters, snow plows, and herbicide spills. Green sprouts proliferate even after the grader blade shaves the gravel so flat it pools water like beach sand. Mayweed is a persistent gift that teaches me how to thrive in unlikely places.

Chamomile varieties have been cultivated since the Neolithic. Commercial producers harvest a blue oil and components of the flowers and leaves for pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and teas. One source claims that people around the world drink more than a million cups of chamomile tea daily. The tiny plant yields bioactive phytochemicals that treat ailments from hay fever and hemorrhoids to insomnia and muscle spasms. Native to northeastern Asia and northwestern US, sources say chamomile was likely brought eastward across America with the Lewis and Clark expedition as they returned to St. Louis in 1806. Rich folklore and traditional healing treatments document its spread westward from Asia.

On our farm, mayweed is a wild companion, my souvenir of our history here. We bought this property from the Federal Land Bank in September 1987 and did not meet the former owners until later. Foreclosed in 1983 during the agricultural crisis, this dairy and general farm had been operated by generations of one family for almost one hundred years. Neighbors declined to buy the land, a common protest strategy, leaving the acreage to the care of renters. The property’s ragged edges showed how quickly vegetation reclaims the spaces people leave behind.

We moved here in late November after most plants and shrubs had withered. I would have liked to walk around the yard with the former owners to learn what grew where. Even if we had met then, they proba