Learning to Garden Again: Warring with Weeds
One learns to settle. To learn to look at things differently, to revise that "perfect garden" image one carries in the minds eye.
Sometimes merely holding back chaos can be a triumph.
It took only two days of my allotted half hour of gardening to not only defeat the paver weeds but many of those in the rest of the garden as well.
The Rest of the Garden
Oh yes - the rest of the garden. I have managed, with the gentle use of my circle hoe, to keep the weeds there down to a dull roar, mainly because I started in early spring and never allowed anything to grow to an unmanageable size. Things are planted thickly, so there isn't a whole lot of room for weeds anyway.
Actually, things are planted too thickly and cry out for some division and rearranging. But that is for another year. This year it is kind of OK. Not my ideal as it is wild and overgrown in spots - but at least it is bursting with blooms and looks healthy. Almost a wild garden (if a garden that includes such things as black taro and giant white callas can be described as wild.) Perhaps romantic would be a better word. After all, I began that garden because we knocked down an old barn and when the rubble was cleared away I saw that we had actual ruins.
Shouldn't a garden in the ruins be a bit overgrown and romantic?
Learning to Garden Again
Learning to garden with a new handicap means many things. It means discovering new tools, even if they grow attached to an arm one hasn't used too often before. It means finding new and simpler ways of dealing with things than we did in the past. It means learning to accept new standards of perfection. Not necessarily lesser standards, but different ones. We learn to look at things in a new way and see that they, too, can be satisfying and good.
And having learned that I discover that walking out to the garden is no longer an exercise that leaves me with a feeling of despair. It has become a new kind of creativity, both in the actual gardening and in my way of thinking.
I suspect I shall have to keep learning. But at least I am back in the garden once more.
** Bonus for anyone who has read this far
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