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Each year, my garden is full of weeds by late June, which is not entirely my fault. I've been pulling them up by the bucket full. They grow faster than I can pull — which is what makes them weeds. There is no sense in getting angry with them for being what they are. Each year there are a few weeds that fascinate me with their vigor, or leaves or fruit. I'm particularly fond of poke weed, which by the end of the summer towers over my head with bright purple berries that hang like beads from a mardi-gras umbrella. Apart from that, each weed has its characteristics. Some are easy to pull if you can gather their "hair" bundled up into a handle and twist it a little, others have long tap roots and knock you over when you finally give them the heave-ho. There are some weeds that form a thin mat with little roots at regular intervals and you have to roll them up like a badly frayed green rug. It is easier to pull weeds during a light rain. The work goes more quickly, the rain is cool and musical at it rolls off the leaves of the trees. Worms come up to the surface and wriggle around. They look remarkably clean compared to my gardening gloves and the knees of my trousers which accumulate a thick coating of mud and mulch. This June, we are in the middle of a drought in New England, so the weeds have deep roots and the ground is hard. When a weed finally gives way, the soil crumbles into a fine dust that clings to my arms and face. The process is hot, sticky, uncomfortable, but the end result is the same. There are not many problems that are so easily solved as a weed. Yank, problem solved. Some people are impatient with the pulling process and spray weeds with chemicals. The weeds then look scorched and brown for days before they wither. I find that slowly working my way over the ground, pulling each individual weed according to its structure is the only answer that gets me the result I want, a garden that features day lilies and lavender rather than dandelions and sweet clover. Some problems, like weeding, you solve on your hands and knees. Humility and perseverance are the only effective techniques. Other problems you solve by standing up, or by remaining seated on a bus. In December of 1955, Rosa Parks went to jail for not yeilding her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white man. Rosa Parks took the matter to court. Many people were outraged at the challenge that Rosa Parks posed to their way of thinking. She lost her job, and some people were very rude to her at the time, but ultimately segregation was overturned by the Supreme Court. As I crawl through my garden, on my hands and knees, I am grateful to Rosa Parks, and to all those who have gone through the hot sticky discomfort of standing up for our rights. Those of us who come later still have to work to understand and protect our rights, but like pulling weeds in the cool rain, the process can go more quickly, and with less difficulty. When I am tempted to give up on the weeds, and go inside and have some ice tea and wait until first frost to take care of the pesky vegetation, I remind myself that I will never achieve anything so great and far reaching as Rosa Parks, if I am unwilling to take care of the easy problem of weeding my garden. |
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