Weeding and Settling

Simply working in the yard, gardening, takes on a solemn grace when returning home from a long and trying absence. Delight taken in the rhythms of physical labor, the weary muscles. The morning after our homecoming from three years in Honduras, we pulled on the raggedy pants and threadbare T-shirts and unlocked the backyard shed. Having entrusted the yard’s upkeep to a friend’s teenage daughter, we nodded that trees, shrubs, bushes, and lawn offered some evidence of husbandry, but we felt eager to don the gloves and trim, yank, mend, uproot, clip, dig, deadhead, rake, and fill the green barrel ourselves.

After a morning with coffee reading Peter Bergen’s “The Longest War” about the troubling and fractious struggle of the United States and Al Qaeda, the larger struggle, it seems, of embattled civilizations, I drifted to the front yard. The previous owners had wisely planted drought-resistant, and so healthy looked the Japanese maple, the succulents, a swath of seaside daisy, needle grass, what may or may not be Toyon, Spanish lavender, and tall swaying palms. Rose bushes under the roof line were top-heavy but hardy. One morning my wife, Carrie, ventured out—she’d been working within on our new bathroom—and hacked and sawed her way through a number of invasive trees which lurk in numerous Santa Rosa neighborhoods and scatter thick carpets of foamy yellow blossoms in the fall. I took to cutting the branches, dragged them around to stack them for the barrel, and then cleared dead brush, twigs, and pale brown leaves.

Often I paused to stand dejectedly beneath our ample-leafed but nearly fruitless apple tree. A young guy sent out by AAA to replace the dead battery in our van, Merle, suggested, as we ran the engine to charge the new battery, that drought could have been the culprit, or perhaps by trimming too early I had “shocked” the poor tree, traumatic stress dampening any surge to bear fruit. Merle’s family own a 40-acre farm in Willets, an hour or so north, and his parents knew orchards, and although he suggested drought, he didn’t mention the late and lusty spring rains that could have slashed the delicate blossoms, but he seemed the kind of man who’d know that. Our neighbor, Doug, wandered over later that morning, and I congratulated him on his robust and lush garden: California poppies in a wild and swirling mass, fleshy lettuce, dozens upon dozens of yellow star blossoms hanging on dozens of tomato plants, verdant mint, vines of wine grape, wildflowers. Our patch under the apple tree looked dusty and barren apart from the sproutings of poppies flung on the wind from Doug’s garden, or drizzled across in the rains.

After consulting with Carrie to differentiate weeds from friendlies, I began digging with hand shovel into the unwanted roots of dandelion and thistle and grasses. The tiny yellow dandelion blossom prompted an inquiry into weeds, so uniformly despised for their thriving domination, but is there a more delightful word than dandelion? Why are weeds weeds? The common sense defines them as unwanted plants, unplanned and threatening to overtake the plants we want and cultivate. On his helpful webpage, Dwight D. Ligenfelter, Assistant Extension Agronomist at Penn State University, offers a few ideas: that weeds are plants not intentionally sown, plants out of place; and note the adjectives: competitive, pernicious, persistent, and “interfere negatively with human activity.” The official definition is a plant that is not valued where it is growing and is usually of vigorous growth; especially: one that tends to overgrow or choke out more desirable plants. You’ll notice the passive voice in these designations, but only because it’s quite obvious, as Protagoras of Abdera put it around 5th BCE, that man is the measure of all things. Only we determine what is a weed from what is not, nature doesn’t.

Interestingly, a lesser known definition of weeds is dress worn as a sign of mourning, proper attire for the widow of yesteryear. I doubt this almost completely, but take some imagined delight thinking that in conservative Muslim societies the women share a private cultural joke, wearing the black hijab to mourn their loss of freedom and equality.

Mr. Ligenfelter also shared Ralph Waldo Emerson’s insight that weeds are plants “whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” Through experience we know the characteristics of weeds, but our scholar at Penn state offers thorough “negative” virtues: abundant seed production; rapid population establishment; seed dormancy; long-term survival of buried seed; adaptation for spread; presence of vegetative reproductive structures; and ability to occupy sites disturbed by human activities. This last is telling: by disturbing nature, we invite weeds to lay claim to the land, and so we begin the never-ending battle of control and eradication.

Weeds as we deem them didn’t exist before agriculture. As Merrill and Ortiz put it in The Gardener’s Table, weeds were “simply invasive, fast-growing herbs that had a purpose in the grand scheme of things.” Indeed, weeds served the useful natural purpose of getting soils ready for planting. Table rasa land invites weeds, which die and provide organic compost to soils. From weeds propagating and dying, ground is prepared for perennials, shrubs, and then trees. “Essentially,” they continue, “your garden is a permanently disturbed area that serves as a haven for weeds.” Nature is balanced, harmony. And in the same way nothing in nature is inherently “bad”, so there are benefits to leaving some weeds to thrive: their deep-ranging roots open up the soil for air and water, summoning up subsoil nutrients; beneficial insects (bees, dragonflies, ladybugs) find shelter, food, and enriching liquid in weeds; they also keep the soil from eroding and blowing away, even keeping the soil moist. It seems we need a thorough knowledge and understanding of useful weeds to keep our gardens growing. Toward this end, Carrie and I constructed two 6x3x1 foot raised beds of redwood for golden zucchini, sage, Brandywine tomato, Sungold cherry tomato, tomatillo, French thyme, chili de arbol, and basil.

Our tortoise shell cat, Tigre, made the arduous journey with us from Honduras through airport security and under the seat in front of you in her collapsible carrier. In her first days in the new world she found dark secure caves of isolation to adjust, venturing out with tentative trust for meals and bathroom. After completing surveys around the house, she located prominent morning and late afternoon ribbons of sun to lounge and contemplate questions of natural theology and canned food. Small birds alighting on telephone wires issued lively and open intelligence reports as Tigre ventured out back to explore the foreign grass and shrubbery (she’d only known a walled-in driveway and potted plants in Honduras). We worried about the bird life, desired peace but hoped for an uneasy détente between avian and feline, and to this end attached a bell to Tigre’s collar. Of course, as actions can produce the desired as well as unintended consequences, the dangling declaration of Tigre’s presence for birds also alerted the dogs on all neighborly sides to possible issues of national security. Tigre’s stealth was compromised early on, and one afternoon she’d crossed the boundary and was chased by growling beasts—she escaped, and disappeared for hours in hiding—but this in turn produced the welcome outcome of keeping her generally within our backyard. Undeterred, she was quick to exploit a loophole by swiftly mounting the fence to conduct reconnaissance (she cocked an ear at our warnings, but refused to descend; after all, she was still within the backyard), and in doing so provoked border tensions when the dogs would spot her in their binoculars. We hope she stays near, but we love when she explores. Such is our ambiguous relationship with what we value and love in everything. So we’ll listen for her bell, cultivate our garden, and remember to count our blessings in this land we call home.

Analysis of Witches' first prophecy to Macbeth and Banquo

In Act 1, scene three of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, a dark tale of strife, bloody revenge, and malicious ambition, the three witches, or “Weird Sisters” as they are referred to in the text, are on a “bleak place near the battlefield” awaiting Macbeth, who, with fellow nobleman, Banquo, returns from a bloody battle to put down rebels. Upon meeting the two noblemen, the Sisters prophesize that not only will Macbeth be awarded the title “Thane of Cawdor” but crowned King, as well. The witches then reveal that Banquo “shalt get kings,” though he himself will not be king. The foreshadowing offered in this brief appearance by the Weird Sisters provides a powerful backdrop and spur to Macbeth’s terrifying ambition to ultimate power, even through ruthless measures.

To fully appreciate the gravity of this scene, note that Shakespeare places it adjacent to the provocative first two scenes—one, where the Weird Sisters invoke their planned meeting with Macbeth, introducing the supernatural and sinister tone which opens and seems to cast the whole play under its spell; and two, where reports are given of Macbeths bloody victory on the field of battle (he “unseamed” a rebel “from nave to th’ chaps/And fixed his head upon our battlements”). The wicked and the bloody usher in the play. Near the battlefield, the “bleak place”, Macbeth echoes the early chant of the Sisters: “So fair and foul a day I have not seen” he remarks to Banquo. Indeed, for discerning what is just and what is unjust will plague Macbeth from this scene on like scorpions in his mind.

Immediately they encounter the Sisters. Banquo wonders that they are so “withered and wild in their attire” and seem “not like th’ inhabitants o’ th’ earth…” These bearded women appear to understand Banquo by the way each laying a “choppy finger …upon her skinny lips” which effect is to silence him. Yet it is Macbeth they address at first accurately, “All hail Macbeth…Thane of Glamis” but progressively with potent predictions of Thane of Cawdor and even “king hereafter.” Startlingly, it is Banquo and not Macbeth who responds to the witches’ grand predictions, but tellingly he first comments on Macbeth’s reaction. “Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear/Things that do sound so fair?” What could Macbeth, who had just been heralded as brave, noble, and fearless in bloody battle, seem to fear? Shakespeare’s witches do not prophecy what will occur as much as what they know Macbeth desires to occur; the witches serve the supernatural purpose of drawing out what lurks darkly within Macbeth’s very soul.

Banquo then turns and addresses the witches again, noting that his “noble partner [they] greet with present grace and great prediction” but are silent with regard to Banquo’s future: “To me you speak not.” In effect, Banquo seals his fate by welcoming them to usher him into their “fantastical” prophecy:

If you can look into the seeds of time And say which grain will grow and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favors nor your hate....

The witches in turn duly answer his plea with “Hail” then offer their paradoxical predictions: Banquo will be “Lesser than Macbeth, and greater,” “Not so happy, yet much happier.” This last prophecy is worth pondering before moving on to the devastating final one. After Macbeth murders Duncan, he is assailed by doubts and guilt over his terrible deed. He admits to Lady Macbeth that he heard a voice crying “Sleep no more/Macbeth does murder sleep.” Later he seems almost to envy Duncan who now in death sleeps—soundlessly, as it were, without worry that sting living minds. Tragically, we can take this latter prophecy not as ambiguity but as progression: not as fortunate as Macbeth, not a king, but the seeds he casts will indeed grow, as the final prophecy determines. “Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.” And these are the last words Banquo and Macbeth hear from the witches. Not surprisingly, Macbeth’s first query, or rather demand that the witches remain and clarify, centers on how it’s possible that he would be Thane of Cawdor while the man “lives a prosperous gentleman.” Macbeth claims to believe the prophecy of his being crowned king “stands not within the prospect of belief.” But Shakespeare’s brilliant painting of ambiguity shows never more colorfully than the witches’ prophecy that he indeed shall be king. For it can be either a seed offered Macbeth to plant and nurture into growth, or the awakening of an ambitious desire lying asleep within. Regardless, the moment is charged, the spark lit, and events heretofore begin their ruthless unfolding.

Without further addition, the witches here vanish, refusing Macbeth’s demand they “Say from whence you owe this strange intelligence.” But of course why should they stay? Macbeth’s question is moot. Wicked intentions, cruel ambition, have no supernatural origins but lie humanly, all too humanly within. Banquo and Macbeth calmly remark, perhaps quietly smiling, on their final given prophecies, Macbeth noting that Banquo’s sons will be kings, Banquo retorting that Macbeth will be king. Perhaps out of noble friendship, neither comments on this seeming impossibility: both can’t be true, or come true, at the same time. But it is left for one to determine the dreadful fate of the other, and his own fate as well. Resounding above, you can almost hear the witches’ hoarse and cackling laughter hovering "through the fog and filthy air.”