Today I am going to try to kill all of the weeds in my garden area. It really is too bad the weeds in my garden won't blossom into tomatoes and peppers and corn and squash, because, holy cow, are they growing well. They are outright fecund. But alas my weeds aren't edible. Or maybe more importantly, they haven't been propagated by me and I think that is what this garden is all about. It is about me creating something orderly and pretty...oh and edible.
Sometimes I really think the edible part has no value at all to me. One summer in college one of my favorite all-time ever roommates took me fly-fishing several times. In all the times we went I think a fish struck at my bait maybe twice...saying once might even be an exaduration. But I loved fly-fishing. I loved standing in a cold rippling river. I loved smelling trees and feeling sunshine almost too warm on my shoulders. I loved feeling the motion through my arm to my wrist and off of my hand as I threw my comically imperfect cast. I loved imagining I looked fluid and pretty like those guys in A River Runs Through It. I loved watching my line loop in the air and then land in the water - my line usually had a plop to it. I even loved spinning my empty line back in and watching the tug and pull between the water and my reel. Fly-fishing was all about the sensation I was feeling and very little about the cold, ugly, bug-eyed fish taunting me while they swam around my ankles. And that's how it is with the garden. Gardening is all about pulling hard on weeds and seeing the white fine rootlets slip out of the ground. It's watching the water from the hose climb up to the pinnacle of it's arc and then plunge down onto my plants leaving droplets of sun reflecting water. It's seeing plants go from green to yellow to red. It's looking out of my kitchen window and seeing the texture and shape of corn against tomato against squash against carrot top. It's all those satisfying feelings. It's so not about the food.
And I guess that is what motivates me in the middle of this wreck of casts and children and dirty house, to find time to go out to my garden and attempt to kill the weeds so that I can grow vegetables that will end up costing more money and time than going to the grocery store.
That and I'm crazy.
2 comments:
Well I think that's a good kind of crazy. :) And I wish you could do that to my yard.
But those store vegetables don't taste nearly as good as the ones from your garden. Keep working away at it.
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