Gathering Moss

Gathering Moss
Originally uploaded by kdmade

After waking up at 5 am this morning (house-selling stress) I decided to a) make myself a caramel latte*, and
b) pack up my moss in preparation for our move.

OK, maybe I'm a little crazy but how do I know if the new owners will love the moss or if they, like the previous owner before us would take drastic measures to destroy it ("I just spray it with bleach!" he said, generously handing over the pesticide sprayer he regularly filled with bleach to get the job done). That said, there are no new owners yet, just potential buyers who are snooping through our house and the fact of the matter is that some folks just don't get that moss-covered brick is a good thing, not a neglected shade garden. So our realtor (who is also our friend) gently suggested we do a little yard work this weekend since we have, in this insane heat, recently given up many of our plants for dead. She said nothing of the mossy walkway, but I decided that that's exactly what she was referring to. I mean, I was going to take the moss anyway!

So that is how I ended up at 5:30 in the morning, in my nightshirt and leggings with a caramel latte in hand, gently scraping up the moss with a spackling knife. In this picture you can see part of the walkway that I've de-mossed. I left some in some places (I mean, for pete's sake, I couldn't take all the woodsy-gnomey charm out of the garden) and the walkway actually curves around at the top so there was a lot of moss to be harvested.

In my moss class I was told that I should lay the moss out on some sort of screen or something with a fan blowing up underneath it to try to dry it out and allow it to go dormant (that's how they ship it all over), but we have a showing tomorrow night and I can't see a realtor trying to explain away a basement full of moss and fans. It was pretty dry anyway, thanks to the insaneinthemembrane heat that is killing everything green right now, so I put it into a box, stacked moss-side to moss-side (I gathered enough moss to fill a copy paper box!) and put it in the basement. We'll see what the movers think when I hand them a box that says "moss! live plants!" all over it.

*my caramel latte involves this stuff. I'm not trying to be overly dramatic or anything, but it's kind-of given me reason to live when the house selling stress really gets to me.

and, p.s., I finally figured out how to post to my blog from Flickr. I'm not sure what else to say about that, except that I'm feeling quite techno-savvy right now (it doesn't take much).