Weeding My Way Forward
I hate weeds. Mary says hate’s a strong word, but maybe it’s okay when directed at the invasion happening to our newly planted sea of micro-clover.
“Emerald green,” our neighbor remarks from across what had been an old chain link fence, now clear expanse. The same fence I’d years ago suggested replacing with one featuring a gate between our yards. “What for?” she’d said, setting the tone for our move from Roslindale, where the backyard offered a meeting ground and kind of speakeasy. No, this is Brookline, and unless you’re planting something exotic, keep to yourself.
My father used to try to get us to weed the various lawns his three boys ran around. “I just love it,” he’d say, of weeding. But I hated being asked. Hated bending over and pulling with no end in sight. “You’ll need a tool to get at the roots,” he’d say to our sullen faces. “Don’t just pull,” more instruction to ignore. “They’ll all just come back.”
My resistance to authority never more apparent than on these hot July days when playing catch with friends seemed the better option. I don’t remember ever having a catch with Dad, but I remember weeding.
The clover we planted in our yard last fall didn’t grow at first, likely because my focus had been on the two new maple trees Mary planted between us and the newly renovated house next door. I’d thought the rain enough to get things going, but spring only brought a bed of dirt. “We need another seeding,” I texted our landscaper.
A month later, I sit here in our bed of clover, transformed. An hour here, an hour there, I’m pulling weeds like their collection represents some ill defined passage into the next phase of my life. The weeks and weeks of rain have softened the dirt enough to to make extracting the roots easy, even fun. Wait!?! What’s happening? I’m becoming something my father would not recognize. Getting all of a particular weed brings a certain pleasure, when you hold up the offending plant and see the long root attached, or better yet when a ball of dirt comes with the whole plant.
“So far no bees,” I say to Mary, because micro-clover doesn’t flower.
“But I want bees,” Mary says of the pollinators sure to come when we introduce the flowering kind. For now, we have rabbits. Dozens of them. So much so a different neighbor laments her loss of the furry friends who used to munch in her yard.
When people ask me what I’m doing with my time, will I have the nerve to say, “weeding.”
“Did you say writing?” they might ask.
“Yes! Weeding and writing.” I will nod. They go together you know.
