When we moved into this house almost ten years ago I found myself excited about a yard, for the first time ever. Our house sits on a circle, and our backyard is shallow but wide. The yard slopes to the rear, and so we have twelve foot ceilings in the basement and full walk outs from the basement into a strange little walled patio area with a corner fireplace. All along the back fence were perennial beds, and placed at the center point of the back fence was a fountain. Sounds nice, right? It looked nice too, but the first spring we lived here it became obvious that this yard had its deficiencies. The fireplace area was a bit crumbly and probably not safe to use, although it still looked nice. The fountain didn't work. The perennials spread like weeds, and the WEEDS really spread like weeds.
For eight years I added plants and moved plants and thinned out plants. And I weeded - endlessly. Some years it looked pretty nice out there, but other years I chose plants that didn't work, or I didn't water enough or the weeds just grew faster than I could pull them up. Last year the yard looked dismal. I was in and out of town all summer long and Todd was too busy to pull weeds. We had a serious summer drought, and the lawn and the plants all turned brown. Only the cinch bugs and the weeds flourished. We decided it was time to take action and reconfigure the backyard completely - less lawn, more plants (and plants of our choosing!), and to our way of thinking less watering and weeding.
The new yard is spectacular, but we're learning that it is as much work as it ever was. In fact, I think it's more work. I've never weeded as much in my life as I have this past month. We have bylaws in this town, and the landscapers couldn't spray before they laid down all that fresh sod and mulch, so anything with roots deeper than the six or eight inches they removed when they dug up the old lawn and beds remained. We see fewer dandelions and prickly things, but somewhere along the line someone planted some sort of Morning Glory-type plant that creeps along underground (from roots somewhere in China) and sends out shoots all over the fresh new sod and up through mulch that is a foot deep in places. The tenacity of this stuff astounds me. I routinely spend an hour out there yanking up every bit that I see, only to go outside the next day to find fresh vines of four or five inches. I pull every bit in sight, and when I get up to go inside I find more. I could almost swear it grows before my eyes, and that if I left it alone it would bury everything within a week!
Today while I was weeding I thought about weeds, and how they relate to life.
First of all, remember how Todd and I had dreams of less work in the new yard? The truth is, I'm not good at doing nothing - especially when I'm outdoors. So while I may like the idea of lazing in our lovely yard, I can't sit for more than fifteen minutes without wanting to jump up and yank up a few weeds or deadhead my spent flowers. I like knowing that I'm keeping the garden beautiful. We may dream of weed-free gardens and trouble-free lives, but those "weeds" and trials give us purpose. We may enjoy our leisure, but we need to feel useful.
Then, there's the way that "weeds" are so often a metaphor for things we don't want in our lives. They are the bad habits that seem so deeply rooted that they seem to grow back faster for all of our efforts to uproot them. They are like the negative relationships in our lives that we have trouble extricating ourselves from, and like the negative messages we hear and heed daily - even though they choke our growth as surely as that "mourning inglorious" stuff is choking the roots of my lavender.
Without a doubt, many of us seem to spend a disproportionate amount of our lives "weeding" - and sadly it is a necessity. It is unfair that the talents we have and the positive traits we'd like to nurture require so much effort to establish "roots", while those negative traits and influences in our lives live on no matter how often we douse them in vinegar (like those ever-present weeds in the lawn) - but it's a sad reality that we all need to live with. The "garden of life" requires constant weeding and watering to bear fruit.
Still, if we look at weeds in terms of their sheer stubborn "sticktoitiveness" we have to afford them some grudging admiration. If I was more "weed-like" I certainly would have more accomplishments and skills to my credit. I mean, those weeds just plain don't listen when I tell them where they shouldn't grow! If my talents were anything like that persistent they'd thrive no matter how much discouragement they felt.
Thus, in this post I pay homage to the lowly weed - bane of my existence, but still to be admired.
Behold the Weed! (By Sharon Flood Kasenberg - June 2, 2007)
A weed's a plant that grows where it should not,
and uninvited, propagates - a lot!
It roots itself with great tenacity -
determined to stay where it shouldn't be.
But what is planted, on the other hand,
puts rather timid roots into the land -
and although chosen for a certain spot,
is temperamental and seems prone to rot.
Thus I have come to grudgingly admire
a myriad of plants I don't desire.
They're certainly unwanted, but hold fast -
and seed themselves so they'll forever last.
It seems our good intentions would succeed -
if we were as committed as the weed!
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