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.