These are my weeds. The current crop, that is. The February-May weeds. And only some of them, at that. Before this wheelbarrow-load, there were six others, each representing about an hour's hard labor. There's Johnson grass here (read "Mr. Johnson's Curse"), and goldenrod (which qualifies as a weed when it starts shouldering the roses), and garden bluebonnets (no, not a weed, but ready for the compost), a couple of square feet of rowdy southernwood, and some stray Englemann daisies that were just about ready to give up the ghost anyway. When this wheelbarrow was empty, it got filled again, and I'm on my way out there tonight, as soon as I finish telling you about it.
I'm a casual gardener. That is, I like to grow plants that like to grow and don't make a lot of fuss about it. I don't mind weeds, either, in the natural course of things. Most of the time it's so dry here (we're at the 98th parallel, where the West is said to begin) that the weeds mind their Ps and Qs. As long as they keep their heads down and don't call attention to themselves, I don't mind if they hang around. In fact, I've never been comfortable with the sanitized, orderly gardens I see in Horticulture. I like a garden that's full of the tumble and tumult of plants going every which way, the artemisia happily rubbing shoulders with the Jerusalem sage, the daylilies creeping through the daisies. The wild bunch.
But there's a limit. It's when the weeds get big and boisterous, like a crowd of middle-school bullies with no manners, that they bother me. And with the rains we had in February and March, my weeds have been on the rise, which is why I've been out there pulling. They're off to a new beginning: life on the compost heap. The garden looks a little cleaner, and I like to think that some of the less robust plants--the red bee balm that came from Indiana, and the Tagetes lemonii, the lovely perennial marigold--are happier because the Johnson grass isn't elbowing them for breathing room and the goldenrod isn't breathing down their necks.
If you click on the photo, you'll see a larger version, where you can spot the weeds I haven't pulled yet, behind the wheelbarrow. And in the background, unmown grass full of firewheel and daisies and dandelions and paintbrush. That's the way our "lawn" looks at this time of year--an unkempt invitation to wild turkeys to come and help themselves to grasshoppers and beetles. We mow a path to the creek and around the flower beds, and let the rest grow wild and unruly until the spring flowers have gone to seed.
When I'm not pulling weeds, I'm writing, or cooking or doing the laundry and the other daily doings that keep life here at MeadowKnoll moving on an even keel. But mostly writing, I'm glad to say. Beatrix and her friend Sarah Barwick sat down to breakfast in a chapter today, and their catching-up on village life kept me happily typing away most of the day. This book is set in the winter, and Beatrix is marooned by a snowstorm in the little village she loves, which means she can't go home to London, which she hates. This makes her very happy, and makes me very happy, too.
Reading note: People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.--Thich Nhat Hanh