With this summer’s drought, weeds haven’t been a big problem. But since southwestern Michigan has received several inches of rain in the past week or so, they’ve begun to rear their ugly, unwanted leaves. So I’m rearing back. I spent about an hour today starting to get the weeds under control. It will take more than that, but it’s a beginning.
Truthfully, I like weeding. It answers some call in my soul. And it’s a good thing it does, as my yard man — the person who does most of the fertilizing, mowing, and trimming — hates weeding. He and I have the agreement that I’ll do it, if he does all the other stuff.
I have a routine for weeding. First, I grab my iPod, the better to entertain myself; next I grab my cap, the better to keep the sun from my eyes. Finally, I grab my gardening gloves. Armed with these accoutrements, I head for the garage to find a rose cone. Rose cones are light and hold a large amount of weeds. They are my container of choice for the task at hand.
Then, as I listen to “Les Miz,” which is what played on my iPod this afternoon, I slowly — and I stress “slowly” — walk around my yard to find a place to begin, my rose cone in tow. Today, I started with the shrub roses on the west side of the garage. From there I work myself around the house and then the trees that dot our property.
I try to make weeding a time to commune with my flowers and my trees, rather than a systematic effort to remove unwanted plants. I study the day lilies and the lamb’s ear and the astilbe. I watch to see what will bloom next as the season wears on. And I admire the results of the hours of hard work our yard man puts in. The weeding is really the least of it.
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