I don’t like lawns. I don’t want one but I also don’t want to deal with the city’s nagging about the state of mine so until a viable alternative is ready, we have an uneasy truce wherein I make things look presentable, and they leave me alone.
This year my solution started to take shape. Mow the easement and intentional looking paths and let the rest go. The results have been delightful and informative. We have beautiful areas of wavy grass and tall things growing everywhere in what looks like an intentionally contained way. They’ve also given me both clarity and a way forward in addressing my creeping Charlie.
First, I don’t actually dislike the Charlie. It’s good for bees in the spring and has a lovely green clover shape. The fact that it chokes out the grass bothers me less than the fact it chokes out other things I might want there. So ultimately it will have to go. This is a process that will likely take me until I’m gone. Increasingly, I’m ok with that.
I’ve changed my perspective on weeding over the years. It’s something that I feel comes with age and, more importantly, wisdom. Similar to birding in its never ending serenity. Different in that it has both an effect on the world around me, and a resulting demonstration of work completed. The dopamine is real when weeding is done right. The fact that they will and do always come back is unimportant in the moment, but vital.
Weeding is a simple conversation I can have with my environment again and again; never the exact same, but never wildly different. Predictable but varied, in any duration.
Weeding has become a meditation for me.
But a weed is simply a plant that wants to grow where people want something else. In blaming nature, people mistake the culprit. Weeds are people’s idea, not nature’s
Anonymous
