A Garden with Weeds

Five-thirty PM. A wasted day.

There was so much to be done and I had done none of it. Hunched over a keyboard. Working on an essay I wanted to finish yesterday. It’s not like I don’t know what to say. Snippets of words, run-on sentences, and half-outlines are strewn willy-nilly over a page that has no bottom to its scroll.

When I was younger I could spew. Spew like a fire hose, immune to the restrictions of spelling, grammar, and common sense. “Spew now, cut and paste later”.

I can no longer spew. No longer want to. Perhaps the individual words mean more now, the rhythm more important, the continuity, the deliberate train of thought.

Five-thirty five. The pain in my neck has won.

Without a plan, I leave the chair, leave the house, and leave for the garden. Trudge to the garden without thinking. It looks a mess. There was so much to be done and I had done none of it. If I am going to mope, I might as well weed. Hunched over the beets. The soil in the bed is soft and friable. This particular bed has been tended to, and ignored in good measure, for decades. The original impermeable red clay now retreating down 16 to 20 inches. A good bed for beets.

An hour and it is done.

The beets are freed and, although harassed in the process, they will probably thank me sometime. The dirt is having a wild convention under my fingernails and it colors the whole of my fingers black. The crick in my neck is conspicuous by its absence. And me with a basket of Cherry Belle radishes to boot.

I highly recommend a garden with weeds.