(HOST) Commentator Deborah Luskin has gardened for many years but just lately she’s realized that what she likes best about it – is the part most people consider a chore.
(LUSKIN) I like to garden, but I love to weed.
For twenty years, I’ve planted vegetables every spring. At first, I did so joyfully, planting peas during snow squalls and burying potato eyes in the cold ground. Like any good Vermonter with spring fever, I’ve planted a garden with the sincere intent of putting up pickles, freezing green beans and canning tomatoes against the inevitable winter to come. I have, in fact, grown enough onions to carry us through March.
But I’ve routinely abandoned gardens once the spring fever broke. With the vegetables in the ground, I’ve tied on my hiking boots and climbed mountains for the long view. Back home, I’ve idled away afternoons at the local swimming hole.
As I enjoyed the pleasures of summer, the vegetables-and the weeds-grew, both demanding my attention. I don’t know which I found worse, the cucumbers shouting, “Pick me! Pick me!” or the weeds — whose shaggy presence was an indictment of neglect.
I’m a direct descendent of the Great Depression, raised in an era that believed cleaning my plate would somehow help prevent children from starving in China, so it was the voice of the food ripening on the vine that I heard.
I picked; I pickled; I froze; I canned. I spent some of the hottest and most glorious days of summer standing over a hot stove. From my kitchen window, I could just make out the weeds obliterating my flower gardens through the canning kettle’s steam.
So this year, I didn’t plant vegetables. I’ve been weeding the flowerbeds instead. Nothing – not the promise of winter squash in the cellar, frozen berries, or picked beets – none of it is as satisfying to me now as sitting in the dirt, pulling weeds.
After years of neglect, there are plenty of weeds, so just a small effort makes a big difference. One perennial garden has been invaded by a weed that threads its way underground, emerging at intervals. If I tug just right, I can tease a two-foot long strand out of the ground. Following these roots is like shadowing a thought through to its conclusion.
When we had a big vegetable garden, we had many mouths to feed. Now, instead of taking the kids to the swimming hole every afternoon, I make trips every month to Logan, where they fly off into the world. They’re working on farms in Thailand, Russia and Kenya. Somehow, sitting in the dirt back home and pulling at weeds helps me feel connected to them.
Since weeding gets me away from my office, out of reach of the telephone, email and the business of my freelance life, I also get more mental work done. As I clear the weeds from between the foxglove and Echinacea, I also clear all the chatter from inside my skull. Grounded in the warm earth, surrounded by flowers urgently reaching for the sky, everything around me goes quiet except for a voice rising inside me, the voice that says, “I like to garden, but I love to weed.”
Deborah Luskin teaches writing and literature to non-traditional students in hospitals, libraries and prisons throughout Vermont.