Merlot does not appreciate it when I stop to weed. He prefers to be in charge of the walk. My wife thinks that I can get a little exercise while I walk the dog, but that is certainly not the case. Merlot's pace is fine until we come to a shrub, bush, telephone pole, signpost or tree. Sometimes even a tuft of grass will do. He must inspect each with the care of a French perfume connoisseur. At which time I remember that dogs are all nose and no brain. Not that the French have no brain, I'm not saying that at all. Just that dogs have no brains. Including French dogs.
So I return the favor by stopping to weed before we get out of the yard. Merlot is frustrated. He wanted to trot down the street with tail held high, and do the route, marking his territory. I pull weeds. It's a zen thing, a zone into which one can slip and while away minutes and even hours, piling up a satisfying bundle of weeds to mark one's progress, thinking parallel thoughts, weeding out the irritating issues of the week, making the tough decisions of where to file each thought.
I know I need to weed when I become obsessive with my cringe thoughts. My cringe thoughts are painful memories, mistakes I have made, times I have put my foot into my mouth, times I have hurt people's feelings, times when I have been rebuked for my forwardness, times when authority figures have looked away from me in embarrassment (maybe I should stop this sentence before I get carried away). I cringe and repeat a swear word, or repeat a religious mantra to block out the swear word. Weeding is the key. Sorting, thinking, meditating, cleaning the flower bed, encouraging the seedlings, anticipating the beauty to come. While Merlot sits with a bored expression in his eyes, feeling tricked into wagging his tail and running to the front door, getting his leash clicked on, trotting down the stairs, only to be held up by interminable weeding.
Occasionally the obsessive thoughts hit me mid-dog-walk, or I see a particularly noxious weed out near the street, and I stop to pull weeds from a neighbor's yard, a total stranger. It is sometimes dangerous to pull weeds in a neighbor's yard, because what I consider a weed may not be a weed in my neighbor's eyes. Many weeds actually bloom. Contrary to popular belief there is no actual line between weeds and flowers, just like there is no actual line between African-Americans and Caucasian-Americans, the mixture of skin colors blending in a smooth continuum from one end to the other. Once I tried to pull up a large clump of crabgrass near a stop sign on the corner, a block from my house. The owner of the house came out and stood with hands on hips. "I'm weeding," I responded. He cocked his head in puzzlement. I never did get the clump out. Later in the season I realized it was a clump of decorative prairie grass. I apologized a year later to the owner, and he couldn't even remember the interaction. We are friends now, his wife having invited us over for margaritas, my first, since I do not have a history of social drinking, with my fundamentalist background. I particularly enjoyed the salt around the rim. Why don't all drinks come with salt around the rim? Why not have one's orange juice in the morning with salt around the rim?
Once or twice, actually more than that, I have accidentally pulled up an unarguably real flower while weeding in someone else's yard. At those times my sense of moral superiority is ripped asunder. I replant the flower and move on up the road as quickly as possible, dragging Merlot away from favorite sniff spots, clenching my butt-cheeks together, berating myself for my bad boundaries, promising myself I will never weed another person's garden again, and filing away the memory to cringe about later. But as many addictions go, I fall off the wagon regularly. Show me a row of weeds next to a sidewalk and it is like lining up coke lines in front of a recovering blow fiend, a packed pipe to a reformed pothead, a bottle of Schnapps to a regular attendee of AA. One weed won't hurt. I can stop after one.
I am an avid gardener. Not a good gardener, but an avid one nonetheless. I haven't the heart to pull up enough of the wild flowers that like to grow in my flowerbeds. Wild flowers do not line up like professional gardener's flowers do: the short flowers in front, and the tall flowers in back, like a church choir, a nice big clump of one color. No, wild flowers are more like a punk rock band, they grow wherever they want to, and I don't have the heart to disappoint them and relegate them to the compost heap. It takes real discipline to be a master gardener, and discipline is not why I garden. I garden for the same reason that I surf the internet for video cameras, to escape discipline. And yet paradoxically weeding is a discipline in itself. Sometimes weeding becomes painful because I cannot remember what the flowers I planted there last year look like when they first sprout. Am I pulling up real flowers? Am I going to have a blank flowerbed, a wasted spot of earth? I often leave a promising looking weed until it sprouts horrid thistly spines and develops stickery seeds. Then I try to memorize it's leaf structure so I will not be fooled again.
One of my favorite flowers is purple spiderwort, also known as four o'clocks because they close every day around four o'clock. They grow in proliferation and are wonderful morning welcomers. Unfortunately they hog the limelight, wanting to be in the front of the flowerbed, obscuring the shorter flowers. Purple spiderwort does not have good foresight; by mid-July they have grown so tall they flop over, trampling whatever is around them with their heavy floppiness. But whenever I heartlessly pull them out I am struck by a fear that my friends and colleagues with better boundaries will pull me out of their lives for a slight tendency to hog the limelight and flop at inappropriate times. So I prefer to let them grow where they want, hoping they will eventually learn better social skills if I just give them enough nurturing. I'm still hoping.
So that is why Merlot hates me weeding.
So I return the favor by stopping to weed before we get out of the yard. Merlot is frustrated. He wanted to trot down the street with tail held high, and do the route, marking his territory. I pull weeds. It's a zen thing, a zone into which one can slip and while away minutes and even hours, piling up a satisfying bundle of weeds to mark one's progress, thinking parallel thoughts, weeding out the irritating issues of the week, making the tough decisions of where to file each thought.
I know I need to weed when I become obsessive with my cringe thoughts. My cringe thoughts are painful memories, mistakes I have made, times I have put my foot into my mouth, times I have hurt people's feelings, times when I have been rebuked for my forwardness, times when authority figures have looked away from me in embarrassment (maybe I should stop this sentence before I get carried away). I cringe and repeat a swear word, or repeat a religious mantra to block out the swear word. Weeding is the key. Sorting, thinking, meditating, cleaning the flower bed, encouraging the seedlings, anticipating the beauty to come. While Merlot sits with a bored expression in his eyes, feeling tricked into wagging his tail and running to the front door, getting his leash clicked on, trotting down the stairs, only to be held up by interminable weeding.
Occasionally the obsessive thoughts hit me mid-dog-walk, or I see a particularly noxious weed out near the street, and I stop to pull weeds from a neighbor's yard, a total stranger. It is sometimes dangerous to pull weeds in a neighbor's yard, because what I consider a weed may not be a weed in my neighbor's eyes. Many weeds actually bloom. Contrary to popular belief there is no actual line between weeds and flowers, just like there is no actual line between African-Americans and Caucasian-Americans, the mixture of skin colors blending in a smooth continuum from one end to the other. Once I tried to pull up a large clump of crabgrass near a stop sign on the corner, a block from my house. The owner of the house came out and stood with hands on hips. "I'm weeding," I responded. He cocked his head in puzzlement. I never did get the clump out. Later in the season I realized it was a clump of decorative prairie grass. I apologized a year later to the owner, and he couldn't even remember the interaction. We are friends now, his wife having invited us over for margaritas, my first, since I do not have a history of social drinking, with my fundamentalist background. I particularly enjoyed the salt around the rim. Why don't all drinks come with salt around the rim? Why not have one's orange juice in the morning with salt around the rim?
Once or twice, actually more than that, I have accidentally pulled up an unarguably real flower while weeding in someone else's yard. At those times my sense of moral superiority is ripped asunder. I replant the flower and move on up the road as quickly as possible, dragging Merlot away from favorite sniff spots, clenching my butt-cheeks together, berating myself for my bad boundaries, promising myself I will never weed another person's garden again, and filing away the memory to cringe about later. But as many addictions go, I fall off the wagon regularly. Show me a row of weeds next to a sidewalk and it is like lining up coke lines in front of a recovering blow fiend, a packed pipe to a reformed pothead, a bottle of Schnapps to a regular attendee of AA. One weed won't hurt. I can stop after one.
I am an avid gardener. Not a good gardener, but an avid one nonetheless. I haven't the heart to pull up enough of the wild flowers that like to grow in my flowerbeds. Wild flowers do not line up like professional gardener's flowers do: the short flowers in front, and the tall flowers in back, like a church choir, a nice big clump of one color. No, wild flowers are more like a punk rock band, they grow wherever they want to, and I don't have the heart to disappoint them and relegate them to the compost heap. It takes real discipline to be a master gardener, and discipline is not why I garden. I garden for the same reason that I surf the internet for video cameras, to escape discipline. And yet paradoxically weeding is a discipline in itself. Sometimes weeding becomes painful because I cannot remember what the flowers I planted there last year look like when they first sprout. Am I pulling up real flowers? Am I going to have a blank flowerbed, a wasted spot of earth? I often leave a promising looking weed until it sprouts horrid thistly spines and develops stickery seeds. Then I try to memorize it's leaf structure so I will not be fooled again.
One of my favorite flowers is purple spiderwort, also known as four o'clocks because they close every day around four o'clock. They grow in proliferation and are wonderful morning welcomers. Unfortunately they hog the limelight, wanting to be in the front of the flowerbed, obscuring the shorter flowers. Purple spiderwort does not have good foresight; by mid-July they have grown so tall they flop over, trampling whatever is around them with their heavy floppiness. But whenever I heartlessly pull them out I am struck by a fear that my friends and colleagues with better boundaries will pull me out of their lives for a slight tendency to hog the limelight and flop at inappropriate times. So I prefer to let them grow where they want, hoping they will eventually learn better social skills if I just give them enough nurturing. I'm still hoping.
So that is why Merlot hates me weeding.