Spring:  Weeds & Seeds

After an unthinkably mild Winter, Spring began arriving early this year, enabling me to get a head start on the gardening season. The greatest changes are in the continuing development of the Front Garden. A lot of digging of sod and moving of earth. As strenuous and tiring as it is, I relish the work. Designing the overall layout, deciding what to plant and where, it is the Creative Process in practice. Sometimes the accomplishments of a single day's work are dramatic.
But there are subtler aspects of gardening that I enjoy just as much. One of these is weeding. A few evenings ago, I had the pleasure (yes, pleasure) of weeding my asparagus bed. I find weeding to be contemplative and sometimes even meditative. Focusing on a single, simple task can open the mind, and working so close to the ground, one can experience the magic of a self-sown seedling or the mystery of an earthworm. Not to mention the promise of the young asparagus spears poking up through the soil.

It doesn't take long to weed this bed, maybe 20 - 30 minutes. The interior of the bed, where no foot has trod in six years, contains a loose, grainy, dark soil from which weeds are easily extracted. Since this is the first weeding of the spring there are some sizable specimens, some with tap roots 8 to 10 inches long, but with just a gentle tug they come out as easily as a six year old's loose front tooth.
When it's this easy, weeding is not a chore. And I don't hate my weeds. Who can blame them for growing so well in such a desirable spot? And weeds often demonstrate their tenacious will-to-live by growing in the most inhospitable places, gravel paths, cracks in sidewalks, in a discarded pot with less than a spoonful of dirt in it. I have to admire that.

The bed for my asparagus has been built over the years with additions of peat moss, compost, rabbit manure, and last year with ZooDoo, that much coveted soil elixir sold by Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo. If normal "garden variety" compost is Black Gold, then ZooDoo is Black Platinum. Sinking my hand into the soft soil I think, "Were I an asparagus plant, this is where I would want to live."

I wear gloves in the garden only when absolutely necessary. I prefer to do my weeding bare handed. I'm better able to tell I've actually got hold of what I want to pull out. But more importantly, I want, or perhaps need, that physical contact with the soil. I touch the earth, and it touches me back. By tending the soil with my fingers I get those feelings of nurturing stewardship gardeners feel from caring for their gardens. I believe the earth and soil, the garden and the plants that grow there, appreciate this "personal touch." And they respond by living and growing. For my care and attention, they thank me in the best way possible,
by merely existing.

 

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