The swept yard should not be imagined a field of dust. With care, the dirt was compacted by use. The yard usually had a tree and under the shade of tree a family spent time in the yard, the coolest domestic space available during long, hot southern summers. With her usual grace, Sharon Astyk describes the beauty and utility of a living, used packed-earth living space.
Instead of attempting to grow grass or other ground covers in the hot south often on red clay, rural southerners would sweep and tamp down that clay until it baked hard as a rock, reducing dust tracking and making the space suitable for yard work. Houses, hot during the day, were abandoned and people moved outside to shaded yards where they could do the washing, cook, eat, butcher animals, and do other heavy work in the shade of trees.
I remember as a child our house in the city had a sparse front yard. The yard had patches of growth but it also had bare spots. Two large oak trees shaded the yard and maybe whatever grass the yard had could not compete with the oaks.
Eventually the front yard was lush with St. Augustine grass. But that's another story.
