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| bindweed covering a compost bin and rhododendron |
After a day spent pulling weeds last week I thought up a new
word: Abundarchy—the chaos and disorder (anarchy) resulting from abundance, as in: My garden has succumbed to abundarchy, and I
allowed it to happen.
I imagine the man who planted this garden, a man who visited
the local nursery every week, spry for a man in his nineties, pulling himself
up and down on the ski poles he planted for balance, tugging at the plethora of
weeds, wondering just when it was in the sixty years he planted and tended, that
the garden got away from him. Now the garden has passed from the hands of an
elderly caretaker to mine that back in January when I was settling in, treated
each plant that poked above the blank wet earth as a delicate wonder.
And now the yard is overrun, not only by weeds, but by other
(real) plants too, like the crocosmia bulbs that have naturalized everywhere.
Oh, the abundarchy. My garden is in desperate need of a ruler, a muscled authority
who is not afraid to rip out anything questionable by the roots, like my
neighbor the weed warrior.
Energetic and zealous, the weed warrior recruits volunteers
to remove invasive non-native plants in local parks. She hikes with pruning
shears in her pocket hacking away at holly and Himalayan blackberries. Her own
garden is one hundred percent dandelion free. She leaves literature on my porch
from groups like Plant Amnesty so I can eradicate any species of the region’s
top ten noxious plants that exist in my half-acre yard.
By nature, I’m a plant pacifist, impressed by the tenacity
and fecundity of green growing things, content, mostly, to co-exist with
whatever chooses to grow in my environment. When I lived in California’s Santa
Cruz Mountains a wide variety of native plants—including some rarities found
only in the sandhills—I enjoyed what nature provided, planted a few gardens, and
pulled only the weeds that crowded my roses or vegetable beds, or embedded
themselves in shoelaces or pet fur. I also killed poison oak, and I as much as
I dislike pesticides and Monsanto, I confess to using Roundup to do it, having
suffered the agony of the dreaded rash several times.
I’ve lived in Washington for six months now, from winter’s
solstice past summer’s, stunned to see the ground in my garden turn from dead
stalks to a tangle of green—a single bed growing first tulips, then poppies,
now Peruvian lilies. After I
cleared what was obviously dead, I waited, wondering what surprises this yard
would yield.
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| Peruvian lilies |
Tiny green plants emerged from the wet soil and I didn’t
know what they were—planted or volunteer, welcome or weed. My warrior neighbor warned me about
buttercup and bindweed, neither one on the noxious list, but obnoxious,
nonetheless.
I didn’t want to believe her. The bindweed leaves have the
heart-shape and twining properties of morning glory. Buttercup sounded sunny and sweet—like the 1968 song—a
flower worthy of a bouquet. Turns
out, they are both bullies, the main culprits in the abundarchy plaguing my
yard. So I am ripping them out by the roots when I can, but more often stripping
leaves and stems, leaving stubborn roots in the ground to multiply, free to
strangle the rhododendrons, Japanese maples, foxgloves, columbine, poppies, and
other flowers and shrubs whose names I don’t know.
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| buttercup and bindweed choking the raspberry bed |
I tell myself that next winter I will be ruthless,
patrolling the garden, pulling tiny plants when the soil is moist and my battle
winnable. I take photos of buttercups and other mature weeds, as if I’m taking
mug shots, so I can identify them on those long dark days when they emerge
tiny, young, and innocent, when the winter has dulled my memory of their
ruthless qualities and I am tempted to let them live.
In the meantime, I attack the weeds in a bed here, a corner
there, losing both the skirmishes and the invasion. My measly efforts, a far
cry from the vigilant stance my warrior would like from me. My largesse
allowing dandelions and other weedy plants to bloom, their seeds ready to
scatter into nearby lawns and gardens carried by the breeze and birds.
But who am I to claim authority, to exercise dominion, to
exert my will upon this landscape especially when I feel as though I’ve
inherited this garden? Who could have predicted sixty and fifty and forty years
ago, even thirty, twenty, and ten, how the plants would crowd each other, trees
and bulbs, evergreens and perennials in such high density that they are
surviving, but not thriving.
I understand editing in writing. I can slash words
ruthlessly until my sentences are tighter army cot sheets, trusting that less
is more. In writing I have practiced and apprenticed until I embraced my role
as one who is inspired, plants, waters, weeds, harvests, and offers the bounty
to others, co-creating because of the gifts entrusted by the creator.
Now I have the opportunity to edit my garden, to learn the
art of revision with dirt and root, stem and leaf, to reap the fruits of that
labor and to understand more about myself and these green growing things I have
been entrusted to tend.
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| foxglove |
