The Native Landscape Reader

“On Improving the Property” (1980)

202 From the reprint edition of Ravinia: Her Charms and Destiny, by May Theilgaard Watts and Hazel Crow Ewell (Highland Park, Ill.: Park District of Highland Park and the Highland Park Historical Society, 1980). This poem seems to have been inspired by “A Story for Ravinians” and in the 1980 reprint was listed as previously unpublished. May TheiLgaaRd waTTs on improving the Property (1980) They laid the trilliums low, and where drifted anemones and wild sweet phlox were wont to follow April’s hepaticas— they planted grass. There was a comer that held a tangled copse of hawthorne and young wild crabs, bridal in May above yellow violets, purple-twigged in November. They needed that place for Lombardy poplars—and grass. Last June the elderberry was fragrant here, and in October the viburnum poured its wine beneath the moon-yellow wisps of the witch-hazel blossoms. They piled them in the alley and made a burnt offering—to grass. There was a slope that a wild grapevine had captured long ago. At its brink a colony, of mandrakes held green umbrellas close, like a crowd along the path of a parade. This job almost baffled them; showers washed off the seed and made gullies in the naked clay. They gritted their teeth—and planted grass. At the base of the slope there was a hollow so lush with hundreds of years of fallen leaves that maiden-hair swirled above the trout-lilies, and even a few blood-roots lifted frosty blossoms there. Clay from the ravaged slope washed down and filled the hollow with a yellow hump. They noticed the hump—and planted grass. on imPRovinG thE PRoPERty 203 There was a linden that the bees loved. A smug catalpa has taken its place, but the wood ashes were used to fertilize the grass. People pass by and say: “Just look at that grass— not a weed in it. It’s like velvet!” (One could say as much for any other grave.) ...