When I was a kid, I watched my mother weeding various garden beds around our house. I had no idea that she was having a good time. Meditative, yet accomplishing something, she was at a peace I could not yet understand.
What was even more vexing is that once that kid started in home improvement doing landscape work (I’m sure you’ve seen my flyers—hand drawn and photocopied, slid into your storm door—“C-Scape”) and I was tasked with weeding, happy was the last—and I mean last—word I would use to describe the endeavor.
Mow, yes.
Cut down a tree (note I didn’t say “chop”,) timber.
Plant a garden bed, bloom, baby, bloom.
Mulch…I could say mulch mower, but you get the idea…Anything but weeding.
Fast forward to now: I’m a busy parent (like my mom). Working constantly (ibid). And I want my yard to look good (she is my hero.)
So perhaps you can imagine my surprise as I weeded my wildly overgrown Cardinales bed when I realized I was enjoying myself. Summer species like clover, grass and other weeds had choked out the explosively red, late-blooming plants (I may have the name wrong) which make me happy with their hearty blooms until almost Halloween. Once liberated, the Cardinales sprang to life (they are the little green “helicopters” you can see in the dirt.)
I lose myself in the search for the base of the weed’s stem and I’m quietly thrilled when I get the entire root. I like the simplicity, the progress, the improvement.
I have now introduced weeding to Lexi, who not surprisingly doesn’t like it. I explain to her how to do it and why we are doing it; why it matters. It’s part chore, part life-lesson: whether it’s our house or our clothes or our smile we should endeavor to do our best and sometimes the path to greatness is unpleasant.
I explain to Lexi as we search for weed’s stems, she looks up at me and listens as much to avoid weeding as to hear my voice even though she doesn’t yet understand what I’m saying, that it is important to make way for a flower’s chance to bloom its brightest for the time it has, and that, much like my mother all those years ago, to make room and cultivate the soil for the little flowers beginning to bloom.
And that there is peace.
