I felt that call of the garden as soon as Ken and I stepped out for our evening walk around the edges of the fields. “Let’s just stay here and weed,” I reasoned, but no, he felt we just had to walk, so walk we did — taking in big vistas of elegant displays of great could verticality. By the time we got back, I headed straight for the raised beds where I should have planted stuff back in mid- to late-March. I sat on a ledge of one of the beds, started pulling out invasives and falling back in love with gardening.
Although you wouldn’t know it if you look at our gardens in, say, July when the heat and chiggers make me throw up my hands and use the word “fuck” numerous time as my people (New Jerseyans) are prone to do, I actually like weeding the best. I like it more than that fussy, get-it-right planting. I even like it more than harvesting although it is a luscious thing — quelle surprise! — to lift a leaf and find some nestling cucumbers. Weeding — the daily bread of a keeping a garden — is extraordinarily satisfying to me for many reasons.
I get my hands moving rhythmically in and out of dirt, which is one of the things cheap cialis and levitra hands are made to do.
If, like me, you imagine each weed as a pesky worry — everything from what to remember to buy at the grocery store or why someone won’t return my call to whether I’ll ever get over being too much of a people-pleaser — there’s great catharsis to be had. Pulling out invasions works well for the mind as well as the garden. Each weed is another niggling bit of anxiety, fear, and dread tossed out of the vacinity.
It feels really good to work hard in concert with plants, dirt, light, wind, and in tonight’s case, water. My body chimes as if beautiful music just swept through me. There’s something deeply cleansing about getting down and dirty on ground level.
Then there’s the artistic accomplishment: when I finish weeding a bed, I feel like I just revised a poem (which, incidentally, is the same process). Or I feel like I just made my bed (loyal readers know about how the “Clean bed, clear head” advice has helped me and some of you).
Weeding also allows what we want to grow the necessary air time and space to actually grow — another satisfying symbol of reality!
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