June was an extraordinary month for roses. They were off the
hook. People keep coming up to me and telling me how amazing their roses are
and I’m loath to crush their spirits, but this year everyone’s roses were
incredible. I chalk it up to a very dry winter and spring and therefore far
fewer opportunities for black spot to do it’s decimating dance, but also the
mildness of the weather meant fewer delicate beauties had a chance to do the
dieback and death thing. But now it’s July and if you haven’t been vigilant the
weeds are fairly impressive as well.
I gauge my weeding success by the garden cartful. Tuesday I
had four – well technically five, but I left the cart in the garden as there
was still room for a few more green bodies before it got dragged to the compost
pile. Today I have almost a hundred ferns to get into the ground, but first I
must weed. I’m not big on weeding. As I’ve written before I try and plant so
densely that the weeds don’t have room to establish, much less grow and bloom,
but I let my hesperis (Dame’s Rocket) run rampant this spring and now as I rip
each collapsed clump out of the soil, I have smothered perennials, and
therefore quite a few gaping holes to deal with. But I’m fine with it. It’s
just an opportunity to buy more plants.
Weeding can be an almost meditative activity if you allow it
to be, as you must focus when you are weeding. If not, you will rip good plants
out with the bad, especially if you let the weeds get out of control. So it’s
best to do a little weeding everyday. And those of us who do, are rewarded with
a repetitive activity that helps you learn to be totally engaged in the
present. Totally focused on what you are doing. Being in the moment, not
thinking about what you should have done, or what you can do in the future, but
concentrating on the actions your hands are taking is the best way I’ve found
to relax and let go. Not of the root I’m teasing out of the soil, but of the
day. It is a good thing to focus. To be present enough to see which stalks are
good, which are bad, which needs both hands and which needs just a little
finger scuffle to be removed. Some roots need to come out completely, some
roots can just have their foliage snipped off and some roots are actually
useful. Useful you ask? What weed is useful? Well technically, the dandelion
works as a wick for calcium, bringing it up through the soil to the leaves of
the plant, which if left to decay will release the nutrient back to the surface
of the soil for other plants to take up.
Hmm? Not that interested in letting dandelions take over
your lawn and garden beds? I understand. However if, like me, you have bees,
you will have learned how much they love and appreciate the golden suns of the
dandelions flowers as a food source.
I have become tolerant of dandelions, although I do try and pop off the
heads before they become the lion manes of seeded fluff. I’m somewhat
successful, but I still have quite a few dandelions, and I accept that. It’s
one of the most Zen things I do.
Gardening has taught me to accept imperfections and to enjoy
chance encounters. I have a purple cleome that in now blooming along with
Lauren Grape Poppies in a place I don’t remember seeding either plant, but they
are beautiful. They clash somewhat with the scarlet Jacob Kline monarda that
dominates the bed where they’ve decided to grow, but so does the unnamed ripe
peach colored rose that has determined the middle of the monarda patch is the
only place in my garden where it will thrive. It’s not a color theme I would
have chosen, but all four of these plants’ successes make me happy. And that
happiness helps me breathe.
Learning to breathe, learning to be, accepting the garden
for what it is instead of focusing on what it could be; these are all lessons
that have helped me in all different moments of life, and if I remember to
think of them when facing stressful situations, I handle myself better. I have
learned, the hard way, that if you go out to the garden to weed and you are
upset or angry or frustrated, and you don’t leave those emotions by the “garden
gate” so to speak, you fail. You rip up the peas when trying to remove jewelweed,
you get handfuls of nepeta instead of creeping Charlie. Those emotions do not
work when weeding. You have to stop holding on to them so tight. You have to put
down the wrongs of the day, the week, the year and instead pick up a trowel.
This year I’m frustrated by many things in life, as I am
almost every year, but I’m not bringing those feelings out among the roses. The
weeds themselves could be another source of frustration if I let them, but the
felling of accomplishment, of a job well done when I rediscover the cucumber
that has been buried beneath pokeweed and black locust seedling, is a feeling
that is too lovely to deny.
I am embracing my weeds and their removal as a gift from the
universe, the chance to feel joy from clearing an entire bed of nut sedge, the
pleasure of astrantia, long hidden finally getting a chance to extend itself up
to the sun. The height with which my compost pile is building up to the sky is
a visual reinforcement of accomplishment.
And for that I am grateful. Not that I’m volunteering to come weed your
garden anytime soon. I have plenty of my own weeds. In my garden and in the
rest of my life, but I am grabbing them by the roots and removing them,
sometimes careful, something with a ferocious vigor, but with lately, with more
and more success.
Paige Patterson is running out of room in her garden but
that hasn’t stopped any plants from jumping into her car.
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