I have been trying for years to stop calling weeds weeds. Instead, I’ll try saying, “Plants growing where I don’t want them to be,” “Plants I didn’t plant” or something similar.
This started when I found out that many so-called weeds are actually very medicinally and nutritionally beneficial plants. Think dandelions, nettle and mallow. These plants are amazing and prolifically good for the soil and good for humans. What’s not to love?
Well, plenty, unfortunately. Every spring, I harvest these plants and others as some of the first fresh greens for our table, and I am so thankful. I use them for stews, pesto and stir-fries, and it feels like abundance to have something I put no time and effort into cultivating be so readily available.
Then midsummer hits. The feral plants that were nourishing us just weeks before suddenly become my nemesis as I fill the garden with the domesticated plants I’ve painstakingly cared for since they were seedlings on my window sills. These fragile babies are in constant danger of being choked out by their far heartier, wild cousins, and that’s when — despite my best intentions — I inevitably find myself cursing those d*mn weeds!
This year, the organization I spearhead — the Kithship Collective — decided to plant a community garden on the edge of town. We had plenty of talks beforehand about “not biting off more than we could chew,” specifically, regarding not planting more ground than we could realistically keep weeded. We’d have done well to keep in mind the adage about the best-laid plans instead. Spring was cold and dry, then cold and wet, then abruptly very hot, then very wet again. We got seeds and seedlings in the ground, but it was decidedly suboptimal conditions for anything to grow … Except, of course, WEEDS.
This is how I found myself, last week, on the few days I had between traveling obligations, weeding like it was my literal 9-to-5 job. Or more accurately, my 9-to-9 job, as I was in the garden till there was no light left to weed by on several different nights. And if you think I was cursing those weeds for doing such an awesome job of overtaking all the sweet and spindly plants we purposefully planted, you’d be 100% right.
Also, now I am sore. Like, surprisingly sore. Who knew gardening was such a workout?
But I also loved it. In between the weeding sessions, I was answering the massive backlog of emails that accumulate after a week on the road, and I’ll tell you what, I’d rather weed than answer emails, and that includes when it is sweltering hot and there are swarms of mosquitoes, which were the conditions a lot of the time I was in the garden.
The end result of last week’s garden work is that we can now include the kids who come to the library for summer reading in “summer weeding,” which was the plan all along. Before, there was no way anyone (including sometimes me) could tell the difference between what we’d meant to plant and what we hadn’t. The many days and hours of work mean that it is currently possible to see the difference between what we meant to plant and what planted itself. Or anyway, it WAS possible. I am back on the road right now. Hopefully, when I get home tomorrow, all that work will not have been completely undone by the plants I did not plant.
Either way, I’m sure I will get to spend the days between the next set of touring adventures weeding again, because the plants I did not plant don’t have any other job but to try to outgrow the plants I did, year after year. And while I may be calling them weeds while I grumpily uproot them, I’m also going to be smiling, because fingers deep in the soil are always going to be one of my favorite places to spend the summer.