Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
Way back around 1965 the song Green Green Grass of Home was written by Claude “Curly” Putman Jr and recorded by Johnny Darrell. There may not be many that remember Johnny Darrell, but it was a great song that was also recorded by Porter Wagoner, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Elvis, Kenny Rogers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roger Miller, Glen Campbell, and even the Grateful Dead. Tom Jones is probably the first to come to mind when people think about who sang that song. It’s about a man that was looking forward to going home, painting a picture of a beautiful community filled with loved ones. It paints a vision in my mind about a great place to live, kinda like how I envision Green Country in Oklahoma. Now we all know how the song ends, with the dreamer being a convicted prisoner awaiting his execution. We don’t need to go there, let’s just focus on the true beauty of the word “home.”
This was the song that popped into my head as we drove into Sapulpa after spending a week in Arizona. I love this time of year and the beauty of the color green that permeates the landscape around here. This is one of my favorite times of the year, and we have been enjoying sprucing up our little half-acre of heaven on earth. Planting new vegetation and watching last year’s favorites return after a long winter’s nap. My lawn is far from a well-kept pride and joy, but it looks good from across the street if I keep it cut and trimmed. It’s fun to decorate the landscape with colorful flower baskets and flowering shrubs and trees.
We also love the birds around here. We feed them and welcome them into our yard. We enjoy listening to the morning symphony of bird calls and singing. We especially like the Cardinals, as we didn’t see them much in California. Unfortunately, we also provide living quarters for a mean feral cat, and she is a known hunter of small creatures. It is sad to see the carnage she so proudly shows us after a good kill. We appreciate her hunting when we see a dead mouse or gopher and we don’t mind her chasing away the snakes, but she doesn’t understand why we are upset when we find dead birds, bunny rabbits, and squirrels. (even though the squirrels are asking for it when they tease her). I wish she liked killing wasps.
Reasor’s had Boston Ferns on sale for cheap so we bought a couple of them. Carlene thought she saw a small bird fly into the fern. She did and discovered a sturdy nest inside with 4 eggs. According to Google, they could be the eggs of a House Finch. Now she has to be really careful when watering that plant. We don’t want to disturb Mother Nature’s cute creatures; the varmints do not fall into that category.
We also had 4 trees planted within the last year. We planted an October Glory Red Maple tree for Carlene’s mother, we got a free Crepe Myrtle from Subaru that we planted to honor our neighbor Charlie Ballard, and we also planted two Redbud trees. We have been wanting to plant a couple of Redbuds ever since we moved in. We are going into year five and our progress is significant since we found our landscape guy, Armando. We are looking forward to watching our plants flourish more and more each year. We are still learning as we go, but there are some wonderful gardening groups on Facebook and I am counting on Carlene to oversee and interfere with my natural ability to kill plants. I like the results but I can’t take any of the credit.
